


a kind of hideous intimacy

by thinksideways



Category: American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Break Up, Burr's POV, Desk Sex, F/M, Falling In Love, Falling Out of Love, First Time, Hamilton: a retelling, I'm Going to Hell, Jealousy, M/M, Oral Sex, Pining, Writing on Skin, horrible pain I'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:29:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinksideways/pseuds/thinksideways
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Hamilton is a hurricane, a force to be reckoned with, and Burr doesn't know if he should stand his ground or take cover.</i><br/> <br/>A re-telling of things seen in between the lines of Hamilton.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Are you Aaron Burr, sir?”

Burr stops and turns towards the man, a bit guarded– at first glance, the man doesn’t fit with Burr’s usual colleagues, doesn’t look like someone who should know Burr’s name. He seems almost out of breath, like he’d run here. There is something about him, though; something feral and wild, and Burr can’t quite look away.

His hair is a bit too long, unruly. His eyes, though – his eyes are sharp and dark, bespeaking an intelligence that at once unnerves and intrigues Burr. Even the way he says Burr’s name – with a bit of a smirk, rhyming it on purpose (he’s _sure_ it’s on purpose, though he doesn’t yet know the man, it just seems right) – betrays so much about him. Within a minute of meeting him he can practically see the heart on his sleeve.

Still, Burr is intrigued.

“I’m Alexander Hamilton,” says the man, and they shake hands. Burr can’t help but notice Hamilton’s hands are strangely beautiful, long fingers and a surprising strength in his grip. So he does the only thing he can.

He offers to buy him a drink.

Turns out, he doesn’t just buy him a drink, he buys him several, then another, and another, until he loses count. The talk starts out innocently enough, speaking about colleges and Hamilton reveals his ambitions to finish quickly, as Burr did.

“Why do you want to finish so quickly? There’s plenty of time,” Burr says. He remembers all too well the stress of the compacted curriculum, staying up all night to study.

Hamilton’s gaze is unwavering, the eyes gleaming brightly, hungrily, and Burr almost wants to shield his eyes and look away, as if he is trying to gaze into the sun.

“It’s something I need to do,” Hamilton replies finally, his gaze finally dropping to his drink and Burr can breathe again; though not before noticing the choice of words – something I _need_ to do, rather than _want_ to do. Like it was a promise Hamilton made somewhere along the line, a thing declared, inevitable.

Hamilton babbles on, speaking in paragraphs – Burr learns about the hurricane that had sent him here, how he’s a writer above all else, how he wishes for a war, for any way to prove himself.

_To who?_ Burr wants to ask, but doesn’t. It is the first of many questions he wants to ask the man.

“Let me offer you some free advice,” is what he says instead, interrupting as Hamilton continues on with his opinions on warfare, placing his hand on the man’s arm, gripping just slightly. He isn’t sure what drives him to do it, but he suspects it takes quite a bit of force to still Hamilton, and that he’ll need all he can get. Hamilton’s arm is firm beneath his grasp, and even through the coat sleeve he can feel the warmth.

“Talk less,” he says, not unkindly, “smile more.”

Hamilton obliges, if only for a moment, smiling at Burr; a strange smile that is almost wicked, like he knows any matter of things about Burr. It’s only for a moment though, and then Hamilton is finishing his thoughts on warfare.

The talk turns again, to women and bawdier things, sharing stories (though truthfully, Hamilton does most of the sharing in that regard). Hamilton is shameless and the stories he tells would make Burr flush if the drink hadn’t beat him to it. He even alludes to having had men, a thought so strange Burr can barely comprehend it, and he wonders if Hamilton is just trying to shock him, elicit some sort of reaction.

 

***

  
It’s not until he stands to leave that Burr realizes just how drunk he is, the room swimming around him. Hamilton’s drunk too, swaying. At least, Burr thinks he’s swaying – hard to tell when the room is also moving in circles around him, the walls dancing. It's unlike Burr to get this drunk; he doesn't like the sensation of it, losing control, lowering his inhibitions. But he'd been captivated by the dark-eyed stranger, had lost count of his drinks and was now here, adrift, like a ship lost at sea.

Then, Hamilton's hand is on his shoulder, heavy, firm, an anchor. Without thinking, he reaches out and grips Hamilton's shoulder back, steadying and being steadied, no longer lost at sea but found, two ships in a storm.

They leave the bar together, hands on one another’s shoulders, but they only get a block before Hamilton lurches, pulls Burr into an alleyway, staggers back against the wall of a print shop, one hand gripping Burr’s arm and the other the front of Burr’s jacket. He finds himself face to face with Hamilton, oddly close, an intimacy Burr feels in his bones.

Hamilton’s dark eyes wander over Burr and he swears the gaze feels like a weight, and he goes still beneath it, as if pinned.  
“Well, Burr… _sir_ ,” Hamilton laughs at the rhyme, still senseless from drink, and Burr feels a rush of warmth that he cannot entirely explain. He thinks of Hamilton’s earlier insinuations, his allusions to having been with men. It’s a strange thought, surely an abhorrent one, but the way Burr’s body reacts as he imagines such things suggests he might think otherwise.

He can’t think for long, though, because Hamilton’s lips are on his, hot and strange as his beard scrapes against Burr’s skin. For a moment Burr remains still, shocked, but the warmth of Hamilton’s mouth is overwhelming and he cannot help but kiss back. It’s all the encouragement Hamilton needs. His arms wrap around Burr, eager, and Burr discovers there is a wiry strength to the man that matches his handshake. Hamilton breaks the kiss and Burr waits for the disgust, the excuses, _something_ to explain what’s just happened. Instead, Hamilton’s lips are at his ear.

“ _Sir,_ ” he breathes in Burr’s ear, and the way his voice rasps over the word is electrifying. Burr shudders in the confines of Hamilton’s arms, helpless. Hamilton kisses down the length of his throat, bites and sucks at what exposed skin he can.

He can feel Hamilton hard against him, and without thinking he rolls his hips against him, pushing him harder against the wall. Hamilton moans against Burr’s neck, a deep and wild noise, and the sound of it goes straight to his cock. Hamilton’s hand, never still for long, slips in between their bodies and travels down, cups Burr through his breeches, and _oh--_

The air is filled with drunken singing, as other bar patrons head home, their footsteps shockingly loud, shockingly close. Burr springs away from Hamilton as if he’d been struck by lightning, pulls his coat tighter around him. He’s thankful it’s dark, hiding the taut fabric of his breeches.

“Burr--” Hamilton begins, but Burr stops him.

“I should go,” he says, backing away.

He makes it home, collapses into bed. When he wakes he has a pounding headache and an insistent memory of Hamilton’s mouth on his, an alleyway kiss (and a hand, pressed against him) that the drink should have made him forget but instead had encapsulated the memory with a sort of crystal clarity, an image cast in stone.

 

***

 

What happens in the following days is strange. He cannot escape certain indecent thoughts of Hamilton - the particular heat of his mouth, the way his hand had felt pressed against him. It’s not like Burr, to focus on something in this way – but then, it wasn’t like Burr to end up pressed against another man in an alleyway, either.

Hamilton is a hurricane, a force to be reckoned with, and Burr doesn't know if he should stand his ground or take cover.  
  
It turns out that Hamilton makes the choice for him. He shows up at Burr’s house a few nights later, smiling a bit too broadly when Burr opens the door. He isn’t sure if Hamilton is mocking him with the smile ( _smile more_ ) but he invites him inside nonetheless, stomach filled with curiosity and dread.

They haven’t spoken since Burr had bolted, and they are practically still strangers, after all.

“I came to apologize,” says Hamilton, no longer smiling, hands fidgeting with his jacket, and Burr feels his stomach drop even though it shouldn’t matter. It had been an alcohol-fueled mistake, even if he couldn’t quite get the taste of Hamilton from out of his mouth for days after, even if he’s had dreams in the days after of kissing him again, of doing other things…

A mistake is all it was.

“I shouldn’t have pursued you in that alley,” Hamilton continues, and Burr tries to nod, tries to make it convincing.

“I should have waited until we were back at your place,” Hamilton finishes, and his face breaks out into a most wicked grin, and Burr doesn’t have a word for the way his stomach flips at that.

Hamilton closes the distance between them, touches Burr’s arm, fingers playing over the jacket. The moment hangs there, heavy between them, but all Burr can do is wait until Hamilton finally decides for them, kisses him again, and all bets are off.  
  
He falls into Hamilton with a reckless passion that is uncharacteristic of him, as if Hamilton has infected him with it. His hands skate over Hamilton’s body, admiring the strength of it, and he feels Hamilton’s restless hands moving over him as well, and everywhere he touches is a strange kind of electricity beneath Burr's skin, something new and terrifying.

Hamilton moves quickly, hungrily, divests Burr of his coat and shirt until his fingers meet bare skin. Burr breaks the kiss long enough to walk them closer to his bed, pushes Hamilton onto it.

He’s almost mad at him, and cannot quite figure out why – perhaps because Hamilton read him so easily, read in him a secret desire that was unknown even to Burr, and did not hesitate to act upon it. Unnerving, that the man should know such things about him, and from what? When, exactly had he known?

What had given him away?

But Hamilton, maddening as he is, is also quite distracting, and when Burr pins one of his wrists to the bed, straddling him, Hamilton bucks his hips upward and moans much the same way he had in the alleyway, a single word, debauched and low: _“sir.”_

The throaty word goes straight to his cock and once more and he finds himself grinding against Hamilton, feels Hamilton hard beneath him. Hamilton flips them, ends up on top of Burr and his impatient hands travel down as he palms Burr through his breeches, lips at his neck, and suddenly such once sinful thoughts seem plausible. Hamilton does not stay there; he moves again, undoes Burr’s breeches and leaves him exposed.

(But then, Burr thinks he might have been exposed ever since Hamilton had first laid that hungry gaze on him.)

Hamilton swiftly slides Burr’s breeches down, his tapered hands running lightly up Burr’s thighs. He teases, for a moment, tracing Burr’s thighs and hipbones with a touch that’s feather-light, like a sketch drawn upon him. And then Hamilton spits in his hand and touches Burr much the same way Burr has touched himself in the days prior, a firm grasp and smooth strokes that soon have his hips arching.

To his credit, he doesn’t beg until he feels Hamilton’s hot mouth on the head of his cock, and then he is undone. He whimpers as Hamilton’s tongue slicks along his cock, mouth moving in time with his hand. It’s messy and filthy and Hamilton’s dark eyes meet his and it’s too much, all of it’s too much, surely Burr wasn’t made for this.

Hamilton’s motion increases, cheeks hollowing obscenely as he continues to tongue Burr’s cock, and it doesn’t take long before he comes with a groan, fingers tight in Hamilton’s hair.

The pleased expression on Hamilton’s face is almost too much to look at, and Burr regrets telling him to smile more, for the smile is devastating. Hamilton kisses him and Burr tastes a hint of himself, a saltiness that’s not entirely unpleasant. Hamilton rocks his hips, lazily, but it’s enough to bring Burr back from his haze, realize Hamilton is still clothed, still hard.

It feels awkward, undressing him, the lines and planes of his body so different from the women he’s known, but there's a familiarity to it too, a mirrored image of his own body. Hamilton helps, shifting his hips, sliding out of his breeches. He has no shyness about lying before Burr, exposed, and Burr almost blushes for them both. Hamilton takes his hand, places it on his chest. Burr lets it rest there for a moment, feeling the rapid beat of Hamilton’s heart, then slides down, grips Hamilton’s hipbone and kisses him again as he wraps his hand around Hamilton’s cock. The sensation is odd, familiar but not, a new angle, a new thickness. His thumb flicks over the head and finds it wet with precum that his thumb slowly spreads about, causing Hamilton to curse under his breath, his hips stuttering at the movement. Burr repeats the actions, slides his hand up and down the shaft, hesitantly at first, but Hamilton’s quickening breath and curses are enough encouragement. A certain twist of the wrist seems especially enjoyable, and Hamilton’s fingers curl into the mattress, muttering a more curses (Burr thinks he hears his name in there, too, mixed in with the profanity) that turns into a low keening noise as Hamilton spills into his hand, and he wonders for a moment if he’s killed the man.

But then Hamilton’s eyes spring open, meeting Burr’s gaze with the same wicked smile on his face.  
“Well _sir_ \--,” he says, pulls Burr in, kisses him again, and in that moment, for all the confusion, for all the thoughts that will come later tonight and in the nights after as he tries to sleep, trying to make sense of it, decipher it, Burr thinks he’s never been so happy.

 

***

 

They never talk about the sex (yet Hamilton talks about most everything else, though Burr’s found a few ways to shut him up), let it happen. Hamilton is insatiable, but Burr is still surprised when Hamilton pushes him off one day, tells him to wait while he comes back with an oil he slicks over his fingers.

Burr watches with fascination and a new kind of hunger as Hamilton slides his fingers into himself, slowly, scissoring his fingers and sliding in and out, a beautiful and depraved sight. He still feels almost too tight when Burr slides into him, trying to move slowly even as he’s enveloped by Hamilton’s heat, by his low moan of _fuck_ as Burr breaches him. It’s almost too much for Burr and it’s not enough for Hamilton, who fucks back on Burr’s cock like a harlot until he grabs his hips to make him go still, moves slow despite Hamilton’s protests until Hamilton moans _please_ and _sir_ and then he cannot stop himself, he fucks Hamilton hard enough that he can’t sit right on a horse for three days.

( _Sir_ had quickly become Hamilton’s code word for Burr, and he’s never sure if it’s meant as an endearment or to mock him. Knowing Hamilton, he now suspects a little of both.)

Hamilton fucks like he writes, incessantly and with a kind of beauty Burr can’t quite comprehend or imitate. He’s usually quick, with them, like somewhere a clock is ticking, like he only has an allotted amount of time with Burr’s skin. He makes good use of it though, his hands practiced and his passion relentless, and it’s enough, the moments they have.

The first time Hamilton is slow is strange. Hamilton’s movements are lazy, he writes paragraphs over Burr’s skin with fingertips and tongue until Burr feels wire-tight and shaking at his ministrations, wanting to speak – to _beg_  - but unable to form the words. It feels like hours, and when Hamilton is done with his fingers and tongue he rides Burr, slowly, meets Burr’s gaze as he strokes himself, spills wet and warm over Burr’s chest, and the contractions of his body send Burr, who had long been balancing at the edge, over as well.

Those moments are the best and worst of them, because it feels like there’s something _more_ there, something that should be talked about, acknowledged. It feels like he might be falling in love.

But he doesn’t talk about it. The time is never right, the stars never quite align, and so the moment for them slips past. The war begins in earnest, and even the air around them seems to buzz with anticipation, teetering at the brink of revolution.

(“I wish there was a war,” Hamilton had said over their very first drinks, it seems he’s gotten his wish.)

The night before Burr leaves for Quebec, he visits Hamilton. He wonders if it will be the last time, and thinks again that he should say something, though he doesn’t quite know what. But the words don’t come, so he lets Hamilton fill the silence, as he so often does. Hamilton acts no different and moves his hands over Burr, insistent, sinks to his knees before him and makes Burr forget about the war, forget about everything but the heat of Hamilton’s mouth.

When he returns the favor, taking Hamilton into his mouth, tongue flicking over him, Hamilton doesn’t take long. He mutters his usual curses, hips bucking up, one hand to the back of Burr’s neck. But when he comes he moans ‘ _Aaron_.'

Not _sir_ , not his usual low keen. Just Burr’s name, nothing else, and it shouldn’t matter, but it does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _God, I wish there was a war._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you had told me a year ago I'd be researching the Revolutionary War for fanfic purposes, how I would have laughed.  
> Look how far I've come. Or fallen. I'm not entirely sure which.

The war distracts them. Burr makes the expedition to Quebec, an arduous journey that leaves him wind-blown and lean. He makes a name for himself, is soon enough promoted to captain and sent to assist Washington in Manhattan.

He listens for news of Hamilton, and hears bits, sometimes. They exchange a few letters, but Burr is kept moving frequently enough that the ones he receives are often well-dated, the news stale.

In the letters, Hamilton addresses him as _sir_ , and he always feels a queer thrill in his stomach at it.

But there is a war, and the months pass, and Hamilton seems like something strange, a dream he once had, a thing half-forgotten.

 

*** 

 

Soon after he arrives in Manhattan, he goes to Washington’s tent, intending to prove himself, to offer suggestions, make a play for a promotion.

Just as he is about to outline his plans for Washington, though, a voice breaks through.

“Your excellency, you wanted to see me?”

Burr’s stomach flips and suddenly Hamilton is there - a bit older, but _there_ , no longer half-forgotten.

(Though seeing him reminds Burr how very little he's actually forgotten.)

“Hamilton, come in,” Washington says, though Hamilton is already halfway in the tent, “have you met Burr?”

“Yes, sir,” says Hamilton.

( _sir_ )

“We keep meeting,” Burr says with a smile, but Hamilton is already fixated on Washington, and Burr is all too familiar with the look in his eyes, the hunger, and is not surprised at all when Washington sends him out. He feels a moment of resentment, bitterness - he’d never thought Washington liked him overmuch. But he swallows the bitterness down, reminds himself he's still young, there's still plenty of time. He's not Hamilton, with an endless uphill climb before him.

Every dog has its day.

He expects nothing else from their brief interaction, expects Hamilton to be up with Washington half the night to win him over to whatever plan he’s concocted. He knows – perhaps better than most - how Hamilton is, the single-minded determination that drives him in whatever he puts his mind to.

(Knows the unnerving weight of his gaze, just how easy it is to crumble under his towering idealism, how he's bent you to his will before you're even aware you're bending.)

So when he hears his name – “Burr?” - said outside the tent, low, it surprises him.

It’s one in the morning, or close to it, and the camp is mostly asleep – outside, there is only the soft snorts of the horses, a faint drone of snoring from nearby tents, the crackle of dying fires.

“Come in,” he says, softly, already knowing who will slip in.

“We keep meeting,” says Hamilton, smiling, slipping into the tent. It almost hurts to look at him. Burr didn’t realize just how much he’d missed him until now, when Hamilton is in the flesh before him, the smile devastating on his face.

“Alexander,” he says, and reaches out as if to shake hands, unsure of what may have changed in the months since they’ve last seen each other, but Hamilton takes Burr's hand with both of his, holds it for a moment.

“Mr. Burr,” he says, and it feels too formal so Burr tries to pull his hand back, but Hamilton tightens his grip, and oh, that wicked smile is back – “ _sir._ ”

Hamilton’s dropped voice and hot gaze is all it takes, but then, Burr’s been on a hair-trigger ever since seeing Hamilton again. He pulls him in, kisses him hard, and the months dissolve between them. It feels right in a way he knows it shouldn’t, but he doesn’t care in this moment, his mind seems blank to everything save for the man before him.

Hamilton undoes Burr’s breeches swiftly, takes him in his hand, strokes him slowly and Burr has to sink his teeth into Hamilton’s shoulder to muffle his moan. There have been women in between them, any number of them, but Hamilton is something else altogether. Hamilton is another realm, a world of heat and fury Burr both fears and craves.

He scrambles at Hamilton as best he can (difficult to do when Hamilton is unerringly distracting, slick palm and fingers moving against him), finally gets his fingers on Hamilton’s breeches. He undoes them, pushing them roughly to his ankles. He guides them both to the bedroll, half falls on top of Hamilton. He's vaguely aware of how exposed they are, but the thought feels far away, almost dreamlike compared to how Hamilton is splayed beneath him, hot and _real._

He fucks Hamilton as quietly as he can, one hand slapped over Hamilton’s mouth to keep him quiet. Hamilton grabs Burr’s hips, fucks back into him with greed, hunger, as if years rather than months have passed. Hamilton comes without being touched, a shout barely stifled behind Burr’s hand, and Burr follows not long after, collapses onto Hamilton and clutches him tight, as if he might run away.

“I quite enjoy the sight of you unable to speak,” he jokes, half-muffled against Hamilton’s sweat-damp skin. He is unable to stop his hands from moving over Hamilton’s body, trying to capture this moment, to still Hamilton (who is already restless, hands twitching at his sides).

“Enjoy it while you can,” Hamilton shoots back, “next time I’ll give you more of a fight.”

He rolls Burr over, ends up straddling him, kisses him with a smile still full on his face, both men tangled in their clothes, in each other.

A promise is there, and Burr wonders if Hamilton had done it on purpose: _next time_.

 

***

 

When he goes back to Washington’s tent the next day, determined to continue their conversation, Washington dismisses him almost immediately, suggests Burr resign from his post, move to a different regiment.

“Men like you are…distracting, Mr. Burr, and I would prefer that you stay out of my camp,” he says, refusing to meet his gaze, and Burr realizes has dual revelations in that fraught moment.

One, they had not been as quiet as he’d thought.

Two, Washington had had a choice, and he’d chosen Hamilton.

Why, Burr cannot tell – he is every bit as cunning as Hamilton, every bit as proven on the battlefield. But Washington had chosen Hamilton, chosen to all but exile Burr.

A bitter, petty part of him wonders how, exactly, Hamilton had convinced the general.

(Burr knows better than anyone just how convincing the man can be.)

Burr resigns on the spot, sets out that day with General Israel Putnam. He doesn’t say goodbye to Hamilton, still seething from Washington’s words and the things his mind has conjured, blaming Hamilton for his exile. He rides off without looking back, and if his stomach starts to ache as the miles grow between them, he ignores it.

 

***

 

In mid-September, Burr rides with General Putnam as they lead a retreat from Kip’s Bay. They had been warned that another brigade was trapped, pinned in by the British forces.

He is used to long rides, by now, sits easily on the horse, a sturdy bay mare he’s come to favor. His stomach roils with the same slow tension that has accompanied him ever since entering active warfare. Burr has been fortunate enough to never come too close to death, sustaining only a few minor wounds, but the threat looms large, an endless cloud over them.

He has nightmares, too. One where he meets the business end of a bayonet. One where he receives a letter telling him of Hamilton’s passing. He wakes from these nightmares with the bedroll bunched around him and his heart beating too fast, skin damp with sweat and fear clotting his throat before he can remember they were just dreams.

He regrets not saying goodbye to Hamilton. He no longer begrudges Hamilton for being chosen by Washington, has convinced himself it was Washington’s choice and nothing else, that Hamilton had convinced him with words, with his military prowess, and not on his knees with his dark eyes staring up and –

The mare jigs beneath him, sensing the sudden tension in his body, and he breathes deeply, tries to make himself relax. He shuts Hamilton from his mind, turns instead to their retreat. They need to speed up, outpace the British if they want to make it to the brigade in time. He clucks at the mare and she slips into a trot, carries them onward to the brigade.

They are successful in outpacing the British, quick enough (only the tail end of the column skirmished at all with the British, and no lives were lost, the injuries minor).  

They prevent capture of the brigade, and are greeted to cheers and shouts when they ride into Harlem. Burr and General Putnam are regarded as heroes, embraced by men they barely know.

Burr feels a hand on his shoulder, weighty, and turns with a polite smile on his face, ready to take the thanks of another stranger.

Instead, he finds himself face to face with Hamilton, who is bright and smiling. Burr hadn’t realized Hamilton had been part of the brigade.

Hamilton embraces him in front of everyone, thumps him hard on the back, whispers, “ _tonight_ ” in a voice so low Burr wonders if he didn’t imagine it.

 

***

 

Burr lays on his bedroll in the cramped tent, rife with anticipation. There are soldiers scattered everywhere and even as his rational mind understands nothing can happen, not again, it does not stop his body from feeling strung tight with thoughts of Hamilton.

Hamilton fills him with lightning, finds a way into Burr’s every nerve.

He tries to write in his journal but the words come out jumbled, ink blotches everywhere. He sighs and closes the book, folds his hands together, cracks the knuckles. He watches the flap of the tent as if he could make Hamilton materialize there.

He begins to wonder if he did imagine Hamilton’s whisper after all, if the excitement and thrill of the day had been too much for him.

“Come outside.”

He hears the words, and follows, crawls out of the tent. Hamilton stands outside, already restless even though it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds since he’d last spoken.

“Follow me,” Hamilton says, impatient, and Burr does.

They walk in near silence (a wonder unto itself) for almost a mile until they come to an embankment. The camp is only a dim glow behind them. The summer air has cleared, cooled somewhat, even though Burr’s brow is still beaded with sweat from the walk.

(And, perhaps, anticipation.)

Hamilton’s head tilts back, looking up at the stars and nearly full moon. Burr means to follow suit but is distracted by the line of Hamilton’s throat, the way he stands exposed beside him. He is as much a wonder as anything nature has to offer, and Burr should know better than to fall for him as he has, but on the moon-washed embankment everything seems distant, as if the world around them has moved on and they are all that’s left. Hamilton takes his hand without looking at him - _grabs_  it, really, as if he could not go another second without touching him.

 “You saved me,” Hamilton is not a man to show fear, but Burr knows him well enough to recognize in the slight tremble of his voice, what it means. It means, _I wasn’t supposed to live past twenty_. It means, _there’s a million things I haven’t done_.

It means, _you gave me time_.

“Another hour and we would have been captured,” he continues. His hand clutches Burrs’ so tightly it begins to go numb, but Burr doesn’t move it, doesn’t say anything.

“Burr, I--” Hamilton says, and Burr had never thought he’d see the man struggling for words, but he does, now. Hamilton’s hand still grips his tightly, the grip saying more than the words ever could. He realizes Hamilton is trembling.

Some words are too big, too much, and not even Hamilton – a man of such pride - can say them.

“I know,” he murmurs, soft, as if soothing a horse, and strokes his thumb over the back of Hamilton’s hand, feeling the faint ridge of bone beneath, “I know.”

Hamilton exhales as if punched. His trembling has stopped and he shifts a little, as if righting himself. His grip on Burr’s hand lessens, his other hand moves up, cups the back of Burr’s neck.

“Show me,” he says, “show me I’m still alive.”

Burr does.

Burr is not often the one in control – even though Hamilton prefers to be taken, most actions are instigated by him, orchestrated. But Burr leads, this time, undresses Hamilton beneath the night sky with a sort of reverence he’d never felt in church.

He finds new scars on Hamilton’s skin, takes the time to stroke his fingers across their rough edges. Burr is slow is a way Hamilton so rarely permits him to be, and when Hamilton begins to shift restlessly beneath him he pins his wrists into the grass and continues on, lips moving up Hamilton’s neck.

“Let me,” he says, the sentence unfinished, but Hamilton nods.

He finds a bruise over Hamilton’s ribs, almost mistakes it for a shadow in the pale moonlight. It’s older, the colors gone from black and blue to green and brown. He almost asks what happened, but thinks he knows – Hamilton does not often back down from a challenge.

_I hope you won_ , he thinks but does not say, lest he ruin this spell of silence cast upon them.

He takes every moment he can, maps the changing landscape of Hamilton’s skin. Hamilton is good for him, still, though by the time Burr makes it to his thighs Hamilton is cursing, begging. Burr obliges, takes Hamilton into his mouth. He works one spit-slick finger into Hamilton, then another, moving into him slowly, deliberately. His other hand wraps around Hamilton’s shaft, takes what his mouth cannot cover. He crooks his fingers, rocks them in time with his strokes, and Hamilton tears out the earth beneath them.

Hamilton does not come quietly, he curses and shouts Burr’s name with one hand dug into Burr’s back and the other into the grass beneath him.

“ _Sir,_ ” Hamilton groans when he gets his breath back, then, softer, “Aaron.”

Hamilton is not slow, with Burr, he pins him to the ground and bites bruises into Burr’s collarbone. Hamilton seems to have forgotten nothing about Burr’s body; his fingers and tongue find every spot he once marked. He has Burr’s cock so far into his mouth Burr thinks it’s a wonder Hamilton doesn’t choke, but then Hamilton’s head begins to move, throat swallowing around him, and Burr’s conscious thoughts are gone, wiped, his world narrowed down to Hamilton.

 

***

 

Really, they should have seen the duel coming.

_Of course_  Lee slanders Washington, he’s licking his wounds, sulking like a kicked puppy from being chastised by the General. But Laurens is far too like Hamilton, and the gauntlet is thrown.

Burr had only agreed to be Lee's second out of pity; Edwards had backed out at the last moment.

It feels laughable, meeting for a peace talk (in that regard, Hamilton was a poor choice of a second), but the rules must be obeyed.

Still, nerves and anticipation leave him tightly strung. He hasn’t seen Hamilton since their night on the embankment several months ago, they had parted ways with only a quiet goodbye and a look on Hamilton’s face Burr couldn’t quite discern.

He hears footsteps and looks up. Hamilton strides towards him, dressed impeccably, and even in these uncouth circumstances Burr has a desire to undo him, to strip him of the frills and accoutrements. He swallows thickly, smiles, determined not to betray how easily the mere sight of the man undoes him.

 “Alexander,” he says.

“Aaron Burr, sir!”

( _Sir_  again. He doesn't know if he wants to strike him or kiss him. Perhaps both.)

“Can we agree that duels are dumb and immature?”

“Of course,” replies Hamilton, “but your man has to answer for his words.”

“With his _life_!? That's ridiculous.”

“Well, how many men died because Lee was inexperienced and ruinous?”

A pause. Hamilton’s hands go to his coat, smooth out some imperceptible wrinkle.

“Why, Burr? Why help him?”

The question is genuine. Burr’s answer, less so.

“Lee was a good commander.”

(A lie.)

“He was a coward.”

(True.)

Hamilton paces slightly, hands at his hair now, readjusting the tie. Burr tries not to think of all the ways he could make him go still.

“He led a retreat, so what?”

“He never even tried to attack, never tried to take anything. I’m disgusted by him. So is Washington.”

Burr bristles at the name. When news of Burr’s accomplishments in saving the brigade had reached Washington’s camp, everyone had expected him to commend Burr. Instead, he was slighted, and in the bitterest parts of him Burr wonders if it’s because of what Washington might know of him and Hamilton.

Truth is, a part of him despises Washington, the man Hamilton so reveres. In part because the man practically exiled him, denied him commendations that were fairly won.

In part – and he will never admit to such pettiness – because Hamilton waxes poetic about the man, and he cannot stop wondering if Hamilton’s been on his knees before the general, called him _sir_.

“So,” he sighs, “we're doing this.”

 

***

 

The day of the duel Burr wakes from a nightmare where he and Hamilton had taken each other on as seconds, and he had viewed Hamilton down the barrel of a gun. He feels ill, considers for a moment removing himself as second.

He arrives at the woods separately from Lee, wanting to distance himself from the man. He doesn’t look, but he can feel Hamilton’s eyes on him like leaden weights. They make a play at final peace talks, but nothing comes of it, of course.

“We’re doing this,” is all Hamilton says, and Burr only nods. He picks his battles, with Hamilton.

Lee and Laurens face each other, nod curtly. Burr can’t help but wonder at the idiocy of it, these men squabbling like schoolyard boys, only made ever so much more dangerous by the pistols at their hips. Burr half-listens as they agree on paces.

It begins.

Five, maybe six paces and then both men are firing, the once-still air ringing with gunshots. Lee’s hands fly to his side where a ribbon of blood has already begun to stain his shirt. Burr hopes it’s merely a glancing wound. No man deserves to die from being gut-shot.

Lee argues for continuation of the duel, claims the wound is minor and he deserves a second shot. Burr steps in.

“This needs to end. Concede, Lee.”

The matter is given over to the seconds, and Hamilton is more than willing to advocate for peace when his man is victorious.

The duel is finished, Lee sent off with the doctor (the wound is minor, thank god). Burr watches as Hamilton leaves, his hand wrapped around Laurens’s shoulders, both men laughing, and it is a long time before he makes his way back to camp.

 

***

 

Hamilton comes to his tent, that evening. It’s still early, the men shuffling and talking all around them, so Burr does his best to appear composed; even as Hamilton’s gaze does its best to undo him, fixed and dark.

“How’s Laurens?” he inquires, unsure as to what Hamilton wants.

“Victorious,” Hamilton shoots back, and Burr sighs. Too easy, the question.

There is a moment of silence between them, Hamilton fidgeting with that ridiculous coat, looking pensive.

“I would have won, you know,” he says, idly. Burr can’t quite decide if Hamilton is being honest or simply baiting him.

He gambles, grabs Hamilton’s fidgeting hand - _finally_  - and pins it behind him. Hamilton goes still at that, their bodies dangerously close, and Burr can’t help but remember the embankment, how Hamilton had looked, taken apart and trembling.

“I don’t know about that,” he says softly, leaning in. Hamilton’s pupils are blown wide, hungry, and it takes every ounce of self-control Burr has not to undress him right here, fuck him until the whole company hears him screaming Burr’s name. Let them all hear it.

Let _Washington_  hear it.

“I know a way or two to defeat you,” he continues, and for a moment his self-control wavers as he bites Hamilton’s neck, sucks hard enough to leave a bruise on the delicate skin, not quite hidden by his cravat. Hamilton makes a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan, tilts his head back. The hand not pinned behind his back reaches out, grabs onto Burr like he needs something solid to steady himself. Burr feels a moment of victory, to have him like this, but Hamilton escalates – as he always does – pulling Burr in and kissing him hard. It’s their first kiss since that heady night under the stars, and in this moment it feels like he might belong to Burr still, in some small way, and the ache inside of him is no longer entirely physical, it's something deeper, wanting to have and hold him, keep him here like this.

“I’d say fuck me right now,” Hamilton breathes in his ear, that same hot low tone he’s always used to get what he wants from Burr, “but I doubt you could keep me quiet.”

He knows Hamilton wants him to rise to the challenge (and a part of him certainly has already), but the last tatters of common sense reign, so he pushes Hamilton away.

“You should go,” he says, and Hamilton looks almost hurt, and Burr’s stomach clenches.

Hamilton leaves with only a nod goodbye and every cell in Burr’s body aches to go after him, drag him back into the tent, say _wait, I made a mistake, come back._

_What are you waiting for?_

Waiting to have a word – words - for what he feels, waiting to be sure of Hamilton’s feelings, waiting for the time to be right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on timeline and musical vs. history:  
> \- according to research (Wikipedia) Burr actually did help rescue a brigade that Hamilton was a part of, and should have been commended by Washington for his actions, but was not. Historically, the two men did not like each other and were eventually estranged, although not for any of the reasons this work of sin is suggesting.  
> \- I'm messing with Miranda's timeline because the Lee vs. Laurens duel ACTUALLY took place before Hamilton got married, so I moved it up. Also, historically Burr was not Lee's second, Major Edwards was, so I sort of patched that up.
> 
> honestly this stupid thing is taking over my brain but I haven't had so much fun writing in a long time so thank you all for reading this, I cherish every lovely comment <33


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I remember that night, I just might regret that night for the rest of my days._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, this chapter is pretty angsty.

Hamilton is slated to ride out with Washington. Their goodbye is brief, a handshake that lasts just a beat too long. When Hamilton rides out Burr watches the brigade go, and watches the space where they were for a bit too long. He pressed his forearm into his stomach, to combat the ache there, but it does no good.

They see each other in passing over the following years, but the moments are fleeting. They are never alone with one another; there is no time for it. The revolution calls, and both men answer, albeit in different ways – Burr as a commander, Hamilton as Washington’s right hand man. Sometimes Burr will receive orders from Washington, written in Hamilton’s hand, and feel a queer ache that keeps him up at night. But Burr is a patient man, a focused man, and what drives him now are ranks, proving himself to the nation (if not Washington) that he is a strong leader.

Burr does well in command, moves from captain to lieutenant colonel. It feels right, leadership, and he has no issue acting the disciplinarian. He lives with the constant low buzz of fear and anxiety, the worry he will not make it home.

(Wherever home is.)

In the end, he survives the war. What fells him in the end is not a bayonet, not mutiny, but merely his health. He’d suffered heat stroke during a critical battle, was left devastated and dreaming. He hangs on another year, but eventually he resigns from the Continental Army, citing his health.

It’s feels strange to leave the army behind, the cause he’d devoted years of his life to. A bit like he’s abandoning it.

(The war’s not done, after all.)

But it feels right, to move on, and Burr begins to prepare for the bar and a new career as a lawyer.

 

***

 

He often thinks of Hamilton, though truthfully Hamilton has become more like a fever-dream than anything tangible, something strange and impossible that Burr can never quite put aside. He writes him still, sometimes, and receives letters in return that are twice the size and length of his own. Nothing is ever explicitly acknowledged in their letters, but occasionally there are things suggested in Hamilton’s sentences, secondary conversations in between the lines, insinuations. Burr doesn’t know if they’re real or imagined, so he doesn’t ask, doesn’t question them. He tries to do the same in his letters, add subtle insinuations and suggestive commas, but it always comes off as clunky and indelicate, far too overt, so he scratches them out. He tries to apologize for the night of the duel, tries to find a way to say these things to Hamilton without writing his feelings so unequivocally and permanently across the paper. But Burr is no wordsmith, every paragraph he tries to sculpt turns to dust, so instead he writes Hamilton simple things, day to day goings.

_I hope to see you again someday_ , he writes, when what he really want to say is, _I miss you_.

 

***

 

The letters continue until one day a letter comes that is unlike the rest.

_Dear_ _Mr. Burr,_

(already the letter is different – Hamilton’s letters have always addressed him as _sir_ , a perfectly normal address except it wasn't, not for them, it was a word that had weight)

_I hope this letter finds you in good health. I am writing to inform you of my engagement to one Miss Elizabeth Schuyler. She is a good-hearted girl who I am sure will never play to the termagant. Though not a genius, she has good sense enough to be agreeable, and though not a beauty, she has fine black eyes – is rather handsome and has every other requisite of the exterior to make a lover happy._

_You are cordially invited to attend the wedding. The ceremony will take place the 14_ _ th  _ _of December at the Schuyler Mansion, with a reception at the Fraunces Tavern. I hope to see you there._

_Yours,_

_A._     _Ham._

Burr wonders why the words are suddenly blurring before him and realizes it’s because his hand is shaking. He’s known marriage was imminent for Hamilton, for a man as power-hungry and charming as he is, it is practically inevitable. And a Schuyler sister, well – most of New York knows the family. Eliza will be good for Hamilton, a gateway to money and prestige. Burr knows all this and more, but the reality of the situation is overwhelming, these words laid out in Hamilton’s familiar hand.

His eyes fall again to a particular line - _has every other requisite of the exterior to make a lover happy_ \- and wonders if it’s a jab at him, another one of Hamilton’s coy insinuations crammed in between the lines: _she is everything you cannot be._ Because what he and Hamilton have – had? - is sodomy, cannot be recognized in God’s eyes. They cannot have children together. They cannot live together as husband and wife.

(Not that Burr wants that. Does he? Surely not, the idea is absurd. Who would be the wife?)

What they have might not even matter anymore, with these years between them, and Hamilton now taking a wife.

The letter is full of contradictions, hints at the engagement that are either meant as apologies or insults, and – as is often the case when Burr tries to decipher the intricate, overwrought language that is Alexander Hamilton – he doesn’t know which.

 

***

 

In the time between receiving the letter announcing Hamilton’s engagement and the wedding, Burr meets a woman. Theodosia Prevost is kind, and warm, and – as Hamilton once so crudely put it – she has every requisite of the exterior to make a lover happy. And Burr _is_ happy, with her.

She is, of course, forbidden in her own way. She is ten years his senior, has her own brood of children, and is already married – to a British officer, no less. But the husband is away often, too often, and in the spaces between he warms her bed and she warms his heart, and they fall for one another.

It is so different, with Theodosia. The words come easy. She does not test him, does not antagonize him, and her hands never grip hard enough to bruise. She is smart, but not overtly so - their conversations never carry an undercurrent, and she does not overwhelm him. Burr vows to marry her, should she become available.

(It feels odd and dark, to hope for another man's death as he does.)

She is not a hurricane - instead, she is a tropical breeze, warm and delightful who will not leave him wrecked upon a distant shore.

Of course, she is a distraction, too, but it doesn’t take long until he is in love with her and it’s almost enough. They are almost enough.

Still, as December comes and the date that has echoed in the back of his mind draws closer, he becomes short with her. He apologizes and she accepts, but the tension remains there and as much as she asks, he cannot tell her why.

 

***

 

Burr wakes on the fateful December morning feeling like his guts are trying to crawl out his throat. He steps out of the house and makes it maybe three steps before he’s bent over the bushes, dry heaving up nothing but a thick strand of spit. He sinks to his knees, one palm planted on the ground, feels tears well in his eyes as he heaves again. He’d slept alone and is glad for it, glad Theodosia isn’t here to witness him falling apart in this way.

Glad he doesn’t have to explain _why_ , exactly, he’s falling apart.

He spends most of the day at the pub. He tries to get drunk but his sour stomach makes the scent of beer too heady. Though he’s long managed to put Hamilton out of his conscious mind (mostly), finding distraction in Theodosia’s soft eyes and gentle touch, he can do no such thing now, alone at the bar. His mind, ever the betrayer, plays out scenes of the consummation; how Hamilton’s rough fingers will look splayed across her pale skin. Wonders if Hamilton will be gentle, with her, or if he will take, if he will demand; wonders if Hamilton will cry her name when he comes.

 (He thinks of their own consummation, if you could call it that – on rough straw-stuffed mattresses, on a bedroll, on the rich grass with the glow of the camp in the distance.)

And though Burr has come to understand that what he and Hamilton have will never be a marriage or anything like it, that they are made of moments more than anything else, it still hurts to lose him in this way.

(It hurts because he wonders if whatever they have will stop. If it hasn’t already stopped. If there is a place for them in the new world of marriage and promise.)

Elizabeth Schuyler has everything – social status, wealth, every fucking _requisite of the exterior -_ to offer Hamilton and Burr has nothing. He has the wrong body, the wrong words.

All he has is the memory of Hamilton beneath him and his name breathed heavily from Hamilton’s wretched lips.

It will have to be enough, those memories, enough.

 

***

 

He is late to the wedding.

(Misses it completely, to be honest.)

He tells himself it was because of the sickness, and not because he finally got his appetite back and downed several beers in rapid succession, choosing the slow sweet burn of the alcohol to watching the man he thinks he loves swear promises to another. He enters the house late, sees the faint disarray of wedding accoutrements, now largely abandoned.

“You’re a bit late,” says a voice, and Burr finds himself shaking a smiling older man’s hand.

“Phillip Schuyler,” the man says, and Burr realizes distantly that this man is now Hamilton’s father-in-law.

(Thinks, quite bitterly, that the man would not smile so if he knew about his new son-in-law’s proclivities.)

“Aaron Burr,” he says, and the polite blankness on the man’s face tells Burr enough, and he knows his name has not been spoken much – if at all – amongst this family. That to them, he is nothing, no one.

“Most of the party went on down the street to the pub,” the elder Schuyler continues, and gives Burr directions. It’s a short walk, but Burr takes his time, tries to steel himself. He wishes he’d brought a flask.

He is nowhere near drunk enough for this.

He arrives, sees Hamilton raising his glass with Laurens. It’s enough to make him almost turn on his heel and leave like a coward. Burr has always found Laurens too loud and boisterous, too ready to fight, and when Burr looks at him he is reminded of the duel, reminding of watching him leave with his arm draped around Hamilton’s shoulders, victorious and laughing. But as he moves to leave, he is spotted; he can practically feel the weight of Hamilton’s gaze.

It’s the first time he’s seen as much as a glimpse of him for almost a year and _god_ , it’s the most wonderful and terrible thing.

“Well, if it isn’t Aaron Burr!” Hamilton proclaims, his voice a bit amplified by the drink, the words blurring slightly at the edges. It hurts to look at him, knowing he’s now a married man, not knowing where they stand; yet at the same time Burr cannot tear his eyes away, wants to drink him in.

Nothing has changed.

(Everything has changed.)

 “Sir,” he says, nodding his head to the men. He sits next to Hamilton and it feels too close. He’s never known until now that a person’s presence could be so tangible, and although they don’t touch he can still feel Hamilton in every pore, his presence like a miasma, suffocating.

“I didn’t think that you would make it,” Hamilton says, and the drink-softened blur is abruptly gone from his voice, instead there is something else – a dare, a callback to the things unsaid between them. A conversation between the lines, perhaps, another misplaced comma, and Burr thinks for what is surely the hundredth time that he would pay a fortune for five minutes inside the man’s insufferably brilliant mind.

“I came for the good part,” Burr says, trying to make light of it, motions the bartender for his own beer. He wraps his hands around the cold mug, letting it quell the heat in him, the heat Hamilton always evokes. He looks around the bar, tries to spot Eliza. He sees a dark-haired woman, laughing brightly with another group of women across the room. Though she is seated, he can see she fills out her gown quite nicely.

_Every requisite of the exterior to make a lover happy._

He wrenches his gaze from her and tries to focus on the table.

“Congratulations, Hamilton,” he says, and even manages to smile as he says it.

_(Smile more_.)

“So when will it be your turn, Burr?” asks Hamilton, but before Burr can answer (not that he knows how to answer such a thing), Laurens interjects, a smirk on his face Burr wants to slap off.

“Well I heard…” he says, a faint lilt to his voice, “that Burr’s got a special someone on the side.” Laurens meets Burr’s eyes, unwavering, and Burr suddenly feels panic-stricken, like an animal caught in a trap. He wonders what – or how much - Hamilton's told him. What stories they might have shared on the battlefield, the long rides.

“Is that so?” asks Hamilton, sounding a bit curious, a bit amused.

“What are you trying to hide, Burr?” continues Laurens, and Burr flashes back to Hamilton, splayed beneath him, begging to be fucked as Burr works him open with his fingers. Hamilton, straddling him and kissing him with a grin so wide across his face Burr thought it was a wonder he had ever told the man to smile more.

Hamilton made speechless in the moonlight, trembling beneath Burr’s hands.

He wants to look at Hamilton, but he’s afraid to meet his eyes, afraid there’s something in their gaze that would give them away, make evident Laurens’s insinuations.

(The illicit nature of his relationship with Theodosia doesn’t even occur to him, a fact he’ll feel bad for later.)

“I should leave,” Burr says, knowing it’s an admission of guilt but unable to bear it another second. He begins to rise from his chair, but Hamilton’s hand is on his shoulder and even though he feels queasy, strung too tight the warmth is familiar and comforting, and the realization at how well he knows Hamilton’s hands make his knees weaken, unsteady, so he sits back down.

“No, he should go,” says Hamilton, his gaze hard on Laurens as Laurens rises from his chair, bows in an over-exaggerated motion.

“Enjoy your night,” he says, “take it easy on your poor girl, tomcat.”

(It won’t occur to Burr until much later that Laurens wasn’t speaking about Eliza.)

Laurens winks bawdily at them both and heads off, calling Eliza’s name. Then they are alone at the table, drinks in hand, and the familiarity of it is strange, the déjà vu of getting drunk with Hamilton, and for a brief second Burr pretends they have gone back in time, that they are once more strangers in a bar with nothing yet transpired between them. Pretends that he doesn't yet know how Hamilton tastes, has never had Hamilton’s fingertips tattooed in bruises across his hips.

“I wish you’d brought this girl with you tonight,” Hamilton says idly. Burr cannot decipher the tone.

“I’m afraid it’s unlawful,” he replies, trying to keep his tone light, almost playful.

Unlawfulness is theme for him, it seems, but neither says it.

“What do you mean?” Hamilton says, a strange curiosity in his tone, a new light in his eyes. His gaze feels crushing and Burr’s mouth goes dry.

“She’s married,” Burr says.

“I see.”

His tone is flat again, and Burr wonders where he went wrong.

He doesn’t know what else to do, is afraid to drink anymore with Hamilton, afraid to continue this cryptic conversation lest he misspeak again.

Afraid of what he might try to do, should he had another beer or two.

“Congratulations again, Hamilton,” he says, and adds, hoping to lighten the mood, “smile more.”

Hamilton doesn’t smile, his brow furrowed. He looks confused and hurt and Burr feels shaken, wanting to fix it, not knowing how – not knowing if he’s even permitted to, now.

“I don’t understand,” he says, “if you love this... _woman_ , go get her. What are you waiting for?”

Burr realizes - too late, of course - that they aren’t speaking about Theodosia at all, that the conversation is an allegory, that what they are speaking of was alleyways, Hamilton’s mouth on his, and once, a night spent underneath the stars.

He’s never had Hamilton’s way with words, has never been never quick enough to carry on several conversations layered in a few sentences. He's always one step behind.

“I’m sorry,” he says, as close to a confession as he can manage, but Hamilton says nothing else so Burr says goodbye and leaves.

He stays awake for most of the night, replaying the conversation over and over again.

_If you love this…woman, go get her_ \-- ah, but Burr doesn’t know if it’s love, doesn’t know what it is, if there’s even a word for it or if they have become indefinable.

His last thought before drifting off is: _Hamilton would have a word for it._

 

***

 

Theodosia receives word of her husband’s passing soon after Hamilton’s wedding. Burr offers to marry her that day, but she stalls. They are often apart as he finishes his legal studies. She writes him letters, sweet ones, and everything is laid out and bare, with her. Everything is simple, and he knows he should be content with this, the love of a good woman and a marriage to her on the horizon.

He writes Hamilton a dozen letters but crumples them up and burns them instead. The right words don’t come from his pen, and besides, he doesn’t know what to say. He’s thought before that there aren’t words for them and that sentiment has never felt so right as he tries to spill his feelings across the paper but ends up with ink blotched across his fingers and a pile of ash that had once been a letter, a confession.

Burr finally marries Theodosia in July, a slapdash affair thrown together so quickly Burr doesn’t even have time to buy a new coat. He does not invite Hamilton to the wedding, does not even tell him of it until after. He receives a response, polite and congratulatory, telling Burr about his newborn son, Phillip. Hamilton’s love for his child bleeds through every page and Burr thinks again that he has lost him, and perhaps it’s for the best.

Except one thing.

The letter addresses him as _sir_.

Hope is a pathetic and determined thing, yet Burr cannot help but feel a flicker of it in his stomach.

 

***

 

Burr is a father.

Theodosia (named for her mother) is a tiny squalling thing, red-faced and insistent, and he has never in his life loved something so much. She mostly looks like her mother, but she has his eyes – strange, to meet a gaze so like his own, like a mirror that reflects only the best parts of him. He holds her as if she might break, cradled in his arms.

Burr now understands why Hamilton had waxed poetic about his son – there is a perfection in children that he had never fully grasped until now.

Holding Theodosia’s tiny body, Burr has never felt as sure of anything as he has of his love for his daughter, his desire to give her everything he can.

From the moment he first looks into her dark brown eyes, he knows he would destroy worlds to keep her safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny notes:  
> \- Hamilton's letter to Burr was taken almost verbatim from a letter he wrote to Laurens informing him of his engagement, because dude is kind of an asshole  
> \- this bit is also follows history's timeline more than Miranda's timeline in terms of Burr's participation in the war  
> \- the wedding conversation was literally the first thing I wrote when I embarked on this because the CHANGE in Hamilton's voice from "Is that so?" to "I see" just floors me so I ~~completely distorted it~~ used it as inspiration.  
>  \- I promise there's smut in the next chapter if that's what you're here for
> 
> as always thank you thank you thank you to everyone who reads and comments on this, it seriously gives me life.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Why do you write like you're running out of time?_

Burr passes the bar, takes up office in New York. Though he has no particular veneration for the law, he knows he is smart and will do well as a lawyer, the city ripe for the taking before him.

He sits at his new desk, a fine one of pine with mother of pearl inlay. Papers for the Levi Weeks trial are spread across the top. It’s the first murder trial of the new nation, and Burr is more than willing to burn the midnight oil for it, to make sure his defendant is acquitted. Should be an easy enough win, the witnesses are unreliable at best and there is no concrete evidence for conviction.

Everyone has long left the office, and Burr enjoys the silence, so the knock at the door causes him to jolt, tensing in his chair.

“Come in,” he says, hesitantly, and when Hamilton steps through the doorway Burr’s heart stops in his chest for a moment.

“Burr,” says Hamilton, and oh, all his letters never did justice to his voice, low but always with a hint of cunning, a hint of humor, like he was having fun at your expense even as you loved him for it.

“Hamilton,” he replies, still a bit stunned.

He shouldn’t be stunned, though. Their lives have always seemed to exist in a parallel state, moving alongside each other in the war, in marriage, in children – and now, in law. They are two lines – two _lives_ \- running parallel, and occasionally intersecting.

(If you want to call it that.)

He remembers, a bit too clearly, their last meeting at the wedding – Hamilton’s hurt gaze, the words, the confessions that were not confessions. All the things unsaid between them.

(He never thought Hamilton would be one to leave things unsaid, but the man surprises him.)

There has been so much since then, been children, even a new nation, but Hamilton has a way of erasing time when Burr looks at him.

“We keep meeting,” Burr says, smiling, though he keeps his hands under the desk so Hamilton can’t see that they’re shaking. Unfair, that Hamilton still has this effect on Burr all these years since their first fumbling alleyway kiss, yet seemingly stays so unaffected himself.

“Is that the Weeks trial?” asks Hamilton, walking into the office, closing the door behind him.

(Burr thinks he hears the click of a latch and his body jerks at it, a twitch Hamilton surely registers.)

“It is.”

“I’m on that case too. You’re my assistant counsel?”

“News to me. And it’d be _co_ -counsel.”

“Do you think he did it?”

“Doesn’t matter. They don’t have enough evidence against him even if he did.”

Hamilton looks at him a bit strangely, a puzzled look in his eye, but Burr forgets about it soon enough as Hamilton slides around to Burr’s side of the desk, leans next to him, elbows on the table, on the papers Burr had so neatly laid out. Their shoulders touch and it’s like faint electricity, jolting him, and he realizes he’s half-hard already just from Hamilton’s damn _presence_.

None of this goes unnoticed by Hamilton, who pulls Burr’s chair out, curves it to face him, glances down conspicuously.

“Well _sir_ ,” he says, and god, just the sound of his voice, that _sir_ , has Burr ready to beg but there is no need, Hamilton straddles him, hands grasping the lapels of his jacket. He kisses him, an assurance Burr has waited _years_ for, and it’s like coming home.

He pushes Hamilton up from the chair, lays him out across the desk like a new piece of writing to be studied. He takes his time undressing them, noticing the small changes in Hamilton’s body – more hair across his chest, his stomach rounder, a bit of softness over what once had been nothing but lean muscle. Still, the fundamental planes of him are the same, and when Burr lays his hands over him he realizes just how little he’s forgotten, he still knows how Hamilton likes to be touched. He teases Hamilton, works him open with as much spit as he can muster, and even though Hamilton is still too tight he is cursing and begging so Burr, never very able to resist him, eases into him, slow as he can, Hamilton’s fingers gripping his arms tight enough to bruise.

(He wonders if Hamilton likes it to hurt, just a bit. The man has always had a reckless, masochistic streak.)

It’s good – no, it's better than good, the way that they fit together is unmatched, and for everything Burr tells himself he knows there is nothing else like it, that Hamilton is unique in every way and that Burr has been halfway in love with him since the first night at the bar.

Love, or something like it. Burr still doesn’t think there’s a word that can adequately describe them.

(He has a hundred burnt letters that tried.)

Hamilton chokes out Burr’s name when he comes, and they are both left with bite marks and bruises after.

“By the way,” Hamilton says as he dresses, tying his scarf high around his neck to hide Burr’s handiwork, “I work next door.”

He winks and walks out without another word, leaving Burr standing amongst the scattered papers, looking for all the world like he’s been struck by a hurricane.

 

***

 

They win the Levi Weeks case. Hamilton spills sentences across the courtroom floor, sentences that never seem to end, going off on righteous tangents. His hands move wildly, restless, and when he’s permitted to speak he strides about the courtroom like it’s a stage. His passion shines through, and it is clear to everyone in the room that this is a man who believes he is doing the right thing.

Burr, meanwhile, is more insidious, resourceful. He relies less on passion and more on logic, arguing concisely and efficiently. Burr says in half an hour what takes Hamilton at least two, Burr’s arguments terse and convincing to Hamilton’s flowing and rapturous paragraphs.

Hamilton and Burr are like oil and water in court, two fundamentally different substances placed in the same vessel, unable to blend.

Outside the courtroom, inside the dark of their offices in the late hours, though, they blend just fine. They make use of their proximity and the expected late hours of their work.  There is a next time, and a next time, and a next.

 

***

 

Guilt gnaws at him some nights so he tries to confess to Theodosia one evening, in a roundabout sort of fashion, as they lay together in bed he talks about work, mentions he often has to work late with Hamilton.

She quirks an eyebrow at that, says only, “Hamilton's rough to work with, isn't he?”

Her eyes fall to his collarbone, which currently bears blood-bruises left by Hamilton's teeth, bruises he thought he'd hidden from her. He’d been a fool to think so. She smiles and kisses him, soft, fingers at the place where he's bruised.

“Work hard,” she says, and he pulls her in, buries his face in the sheath of her dark hair, holds her tight against his chest.

“How long?” he asks her, muffled against her skin, and wonders if it’s evident to everyone, or just the ones who love him.

“Shh,” she says, finger to his lips. He embraces her tighter, wondering how he could be so lucky. He wants to thank her, bless her, but she would take no such thanks from him so instead he slides his hand across her hip, slips beneath her nightdress. She is already quite wet and it occurs to him she might like the idea, a notion so strange his fingers stop for a moment until she places a hand on the back of his neck, kind but firm, and his fingers move again, sliding over and into her, wet and welcoming. It doesn’t take long before she bucks against him, gasping softly (she’s quiet when she comes, so unlike Hamilton).

He moves further between her legs, tongue joining his fingers. He gets her off twice more and would have kept going, but she pulls him up, kisses him through a smile.

“I’m working late tomorrow,” he tells her, but she only laughs, kisses him once more.

 

***

 

Their lives have run in parallel for so long but they do not stay so forever. Hamilton catches the public eye, is invited to the constitutional convention (a fact he shares with a glassy-eyed rapture that Burr cannot comprehend). His ideals are given a channel, people begin to clamor for his words and Hamilton is ever eager to give it to them. He writes and writes, and when Burr watches him he thinks of hurricanes, of natural disasters, and thinks surely this is not a pace Hamilton can sustain for long.

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” he asks Hamilton one night. Hamilton is bent so far over his paper he looks like he might kiss it. The man needs glasses but refuses to acknowledge that fact.

“I just have to finish this,” says Hamilton, not a response, not really, an idle brush-off, the way he might placate his wife.

“Day and night,” Burr says, “you’re writing. Like it’s going out of style. Why, Alexander?”

“You know why,” Hamilton replies, and the tone is cutting, flat. Burr recoils as if slapped, begins to leave. He does know, Hamilton's confessed as much to him - that he was never supposed to live past twenty, that every minute feels borrowed. Of course he won’t stop writing. Not until he’s made to stop, at least.

“Wait, Aaron, wait,” Hamilton rises, “don’t go.”

(He should go. Even if watching the man write is its own sort of enchanting.)

Hamilton goes to him, draws him back to the desk. He shuffles the papers aside (touching them carefully, like children, Burr notices), lays Burr over the desk.

Hamilton undresses Burr, kisses him as his hands roam over Burr’s body, stroking him until he’s hard in Hamilton’s hand. Hamilton draws away and Burr moans, but then he’s back with quill and inkwell in hand.

“Let me just get this down,” Hamilton mutters, and there is a rough scratching sensation as Hamilton moves his quill across Burr’s chest. He’s fucking writing on Burr, drafting him like an essay, but the scratch of the quill is strangely erotic, and Hamilton’s concentration even more so – the intensity of his gaze and the way he writes so deliberately, whether the medium beneath is paper or skin, what always matters to Hamilton are the _words_.

“What are you writing?” Burr asks, feeling the ink cool on his skin.

“Everything I want to do to you,” Hamilton replies, not looking up, “I’ll read it to you when I’m finished.”

“You’ll barely be able to see it,” Burr continues. The ink is little more than a shadow on his dark skin, the words a mystery.

“Hush,” says Hamilton, though his voice is kind, “I’ll know what it says.”

They go silent, and Burr watches with a rapt fascination as Hamilton continues writing the missive across his skin. It should hurt, but Burr likes the sensation, the faint pricking. He likes even more being Hamilton’s sole source of interest, his gaze intense and heavy on Burr’s body as he writes out every sordid sentence on the skin he knows so well.

Hamilton finishes, even goes so far as to sign his work, scrawling his name on the inside of Burr’s thigh, a sensation that is almost too much to stand. From anyone else it might have been romantic, a dedication, but Burr thinks this feels more like a challenge, perhaps another of Hamilton's sly insults. But it's also right, having Hamilton's name on him like this.

After all, an artist always signs his work, and in a way Burr is just another work of Alexander Hamilton’s, irreparably shaped by his hands.

When he fucks Hamilton, the ink runs everywhere, mixed. In a queer way it feels appropriate – everything is mixed and indecipherable. He knows, in a way he cannot entirely articulate, that Hamilton is falling in love, but not with him – with the constitution, with politics, with seeing his ideas made real.

Knows their lives, which have so long run parallel, run intersected, have begun to separate, and there is no way to stop it.

 

***

 

He realizes afterward he is permanently stained. A blot of ink on his left side, right by the ribcage, only slightly darker than his own skin, barely noticeable unless you knew to look for it. There’s no lettering to it anymore, no indication of the writing that it once was. As much as he scrubs, the ink does not come off, has been sunk permanently beneath the skin, tattooed. He wonders if it had been intentional, the mark, Hamilton’s ink settled forever in his skin.

Burr’s hand goes to it, sometimes. He’ll trace the malformed shape of it, a circle broken open.

(He will think, years later, that it's the best representation of their relationship that he could have. Accidental, messy and undefined, but a permanent, if faded, stain on Burr.)

 

***

 

It’s the middle of the night and by now Burr should know that all unexpected roads lead back to Hamilton, but still, he’s momentarily taken aback when he opens the door and Hamilton’s there, looking feral and wild-eyed. Burr is transported back to when they first met – Hamilton looks like the hurricane has finally struck, and Burr braces himself for the storm.

“Aaron B--”’

“It’s the middle of the night,” he says, cutting him off. Truthfully, he’d been awake. Theodosia and the children were off visiting their cousins, and the empty house feels strange and haunted without anyone else here.

“Can we confer, sir?” Hamilton says, ignoring Burr’s comment. Burr’s stomach drops a bit at the word - _sir_ \- as it always does. They have seen less of each other since Hamilton moved offices, and he misses him.

“Is this a legal matter?” He is cautious. He doesn’t like the blown look in Hamilton’s eye, and he wonders when he’d last slept.

“Yes.”

“What do you need?”

“Burr, you’re a better lawyer than me.”

True enough. Few judges have hours to spare while Hamilton waxes poetic before the jury.

“You’re incredible in court. Succinct, persuasive. My client needs a strong defense.”

“Who’s your client?” He expects a name. He might even agree to assist.

(If only to eke out a few more late nights with Hamilton.)

“The new U.S. Constitution...?” Hamilton says, a bit sheepish, the words rising at the end like he’s asking a question.

“No.”

“Hear me out!” Hamilton steps closer. He doesn’t ask of Theodosia’s whereabouts, doesn’t seem to care. He grabs Burr’s hands, brings their faces close. It’s intimate and strange and Burr might have liked it more if it didn't come with so many strings attached.

Hamilton continues his argument – a series of anonymous essays defending the Constitution, winning the people over. _The Federalist Papers_ , they’ll call them. Burr continues to refuse.

“What are you waiting for?” Hamilton says, practically shouts, and once again Burr doesn’t know if they’re speaking of the Constitution or if Hamilton has switched subjects without telling him, as he has so many times before.

(He often thinks Hamilton must have a hundred conversations running in his head at any given moment, and is apt to change the subject without warning his conversational partner first.)

The air shifts as if a switch was thrown and Hamilton softens, looking confused. He meets Burr’s gaze, his intelligent eyes burning into him like coals until Burr has to look away.

“I don’t understand how you stand to the side,” continues Hamilton, voice almost tender, “if you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?”

Just as in court, they are oil and water, poured together in a vessel but not combined, fundamentally kept apart by their very nature, every piece of their chemistry repellant to the other.

That is, until they’re shaken.

And they are shaken, in a way, with a kiss. Hamilton is still exasperated – both of them are – but they have stood so close for so long it is easy to move just a few inches more. The kisses are fraught in a way they have not been before, and Burr thinks, as his hands move to undress Hamilton, that he understands a bit of what Hamilton must always feel – that his

( _their_ )

time is running out, the last grains of sand are spilling through the hourglass.

The lines, once parallel, diverge.

He takes Hamilton, already half-undressed, to bed. It’s a welcome change from the years spent over hardwood desks (and on more than one occasion, the floor). He tries to memorize Hamilton’s skin, the way his breath speeds up as Burr takes him in hand, knows it’s a futile endeavor.

_Stay with me_ , he thinks but does not say as Hamilton’s hands move over the skin he’d once written missives across.

Hamilton’s tongue still moves like a miracle and leaves Burr blasphemous, he has to pull him by the hair off his cock before he comes. He pushes Hamilton onto his back, slides oil-slicked fingers into him and coaxes him open. He tries to fuck the words out of Hamilton, but there is one word – ‘ _Aaron’_ \- that he leaves on Hamilton’s lips as he comes like a shot between them.

They stay close, after, and Hamilton kisses him over and over again. There are still things unsaid between them, things tamped down by the sex but not gone, but Burr still cannot say it.

_What are you waiting for?_

“Burr,” Hamilton says, clutching his hand, and for a moment Burr thinks _this is it, this is it_ , “reconsider. Take a stand with me. _Please_.”

A breath and Burr almost answers, almost says _yes_ , because he thinks Hamilton is finally speaking about them, and then:

“The Constitution needs your help.”

It hadn’t been about them. Or it – they - had been another secondary topic, hidden. How is he supposed to answer?

_Just once, stop speaking in paragraphs. Tell me what you mean._ He wants to hit him, kiss him, _anything_ to find some definitive conclusion in their conversations, in Hamilton’s allusions. Burr wants to uncover the things buried underneath the palaces of paragraphs Hamilton builds, to strip them to their foundation.

But he isn’t sure enough. Of anything – the constitution, them, and Burr is a man who does not act until he is sure.

Not with something so powerful as this.

“No, Alexander,” he says, knowing they are breaking, because he cannot keep on like this, these conversations within conversations, not when he never knows how to answer.

 

***

 

Hamilton comes to his office just once more after Burr refuses to help with the federalist writings. When Burr moves to take his hand, Hamilton turns away. Burr is close enough to see his lips are bitten almost raw, and the nails gone to nubs. There are dark circles under his eyes, and the eyes themselves are bloodshot, tired. He knows Hamilton is nonstop, the words a waterfall, but god, he wishes he knew how to make the man pause.

(He thought he’d known how to stop him, once.)

“I can’t, Aaron,” Hamilton says, his voice thick, “you're a distraction. A liability”

_What are you waiting for?_

“If I can’t trust you to act as my ally,” Hamilton continues, “I'm afraid I can't continue this.”

There is the ghost of a sob in Hamilton's voice. Burr's hand unconsciously goes to his ribs, where the blotch of ink still sits, stained. The movement doesn't go unnoticed by Hamilton.

He always saw too much.

“You have no beliefs,” Hamilton says.

“Just because I don't feel the need to shout my convictions from the rooftop--” begins Burr, but Hamilton cuts him off

“You'll ruin me,” Hamilton says, softly, and all Burr can think is _like you've already done to me?_

“You’ll ruin yourself,” he snaps back, practically snarls, and the words are enough to make Hamilton leave.

Neither tries to salvage it. The lines are too far diverged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I don't actually really have any notes for this, it's basically a dirtier, more angsty telling of 'Non-Stop.' As always, I seriously adore everyone's lovely compliments and the tacit enabling of my obsession with these two. Thank you all <33


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hate the sin, love the sinner._

Hamilton rises, and Burr stagnates.

At least, that’s how it feels. Hamilton becomes Washington’s Secretary of Treasury, is handed power and prestige by the handful. _The Federalist Papers_ are a roaring success, but Burr still feels a bit nauseous when he reads them – they remind him too much of the hurt look in Hamilton’s eyes, the way the word _no_ had felt on his lips.

How was he supposed to _know_?

 

***

 

When they meet again, they are polite, achingly so.

“Mister Secretary!” he says. He doesn’t say his name. Isn't sure if he could say it without betraying something.

“Mister Burr!” replies Hamilton. They shake hands, exchange idle gossip about the name change on Clermont Street. Hamilton reveals he’s on his way to a meeting with Jefferson and Madison to discuss his debt plan, and the surety in his voice is all too familiar.

“And how are you going to get that one through?” asks Burr, quirking a smile. It hurts to do so, but he can’t help it, he knows there’s some plan up Hamilton’s sleeve.

“I guess I’m gonna finally have to listen to you,” replies Hamilton.

“Really?”

“Talk less,” Hamilton’s face warps into something then, a twisted wrench of the lips that seems less a smile and more a corpse’s rictus, “smile more.”

The words are mocking, the smile even more so.

Burr forces a laugh that wouldn’t even fool a child.

“Do whatever it takes to get my plan through Congress,” Hamilton continues. _Whatever it takes_. Burr feels his old jealousies rise up, even though they have no place anymore, no right. He still imagines it, Hamilton doing whatever it takes, on his knees, mouth just as convincing when filled.

His stomach churns.

“Madison and Jefferson are merciless,” he cautions, but thinks of that masochistic streak he’d sometimes unearthed within Hamilton, how there were nights when he could never fuck him hard enough, and wonders if the words would be taken more as encouragement than dissuasion.

“Well, hate the sin, love the sinner,” Hamilton says, and fucking _winks_ , whatever pain that Burr might have imagined in his eyes now gone, replaced with an steely determination that is unfathomable to Burr.

“I’ve gotta go,” Hamilton says, “decisions are happening over dinner.”

And he does it. However Hamilton convinces Madison and Jefferson, it is effective. Hamilton emerges from his meeting with unprecedented financial power, an infantile system he can shape however he wants.

All at the cost of a capital.

All a mystery, all taking place behind closed doors, the arguments won through methods Burr refuses to imagine.

He only realizes the real genius of it later. Wherever the capital is doesn’t matter. The banks matter, and Hamilton has the banks right where he wants them. Of what importance is the nation’s capital when the economic capital is right at their doorstep?

Money is power, after all.

Burr can’t blame him for it. All Burr wants, really, is to be part of it – to be at that dinner table, in the room behind the closed door.

He takes to imagining it, until it seems to obtain an almost mythological status – not a room but The Room, where the important players sit, where laws are writ and decisions made. He will get there, he’s sure of it. After all, he is a smart man, and a patient man above all else.

Every dog has its day.

 

***

 

It feels good, to finally _win_.

The Senate seat takes Burr that much closer to The Room – a stepping stone. They will see his political prowess, his intelligence, his name in the papers.

So what if it means changing sides? Politics are all just different masks over one fundamental idea, anyway. It all funnels down to power.

So what if it means unseating Hamilton’s father-in-law?

(Though, maybe a bitter part of him enjoys that, a small and petty win over Hamilton.)

For once, he is not surprised when Hamilton bursts into his house to confront him, the paper still crumpled in his hand, the headline glaring: _War Hero Phillip Schuyler Loses Senate Seat to Young Upstart Aaron Burr._

“Since when,” Hamilton says, his voice loud, accusatory, “are you a Democratic Republican?”

He spits out the word like it’s gone rancid on his tongue.

Burr pauses for a moment. For once in his goddamn life he just _took_ something, and now Hamilton has the audacity to act like it’s undeserved? He’s done nothing more than what Hamilton’s done ever since stepping off the boat. He wants to scream all this to him, point out every hypocritical piece of Hamilton’s anger.

But Burr does not lose his temper so easily. So instead he forces a smile.

“Since being one put me on the up and up,” he replies. Truthfully, switching parties had been easy enough, Burr hadn’t blinked an eye. They all lead to The Room.

“Look,” he says, “the senate seat was up for grabs. I took it.”

Emphasis on the word: _took_.

Hamilton only stares with disbelief.

“I always considered you a friend,” he says, and his voice is quieter now, hurt.

“I don’t see why that has to end,” Burr says, but it’s a lie – they’ve ended already, words of ruin shared in his office. It has to end – it _has_ ended - because they are at once too alike and too different, and in the years that have passed a chasm has opened up between them, vast and yawning, and surely neither can cross it now.

 

***

 

Theodosia makes him a widow halfway through his term as senator. He buries her at Trinity Church in the nicest plot he can afford. The funeral is almost too much for him, the priest extolling Theodosia’s virtues but never coming close to capturing who she really was. His daughter starts weeping halfway through so he picks her up, holds her as she shakes like a leaf against his chest. She is too truly too old now to be held, too heavy, but even as Burr’s arms begin to quake he holds her tight, lets her weep against his neck until his shirt is soaked through. She is not yet ten and it is too soon for her to have to say goodbye.

It is too soon for both of them.

That night Burr retires alone to the bedchamber and collapses on the bed, screams into the pillow so he doesn’t alarm the rest of the household. The screams turn to sobs that feel as if they are being wrenched from his body.

Burr does not break often, but when he does, he breaks hard.

 

***

 

It gets worse from there.

Hamilton takes to slandering Democratic Republicans with a new fury, even founds a fucking _paper_ for the sole purpose of attacking the faction, vicious and unrepentant. Burr watches this all on staff with Madison and Jefferson, united by a common enemy.

Burr doesn’t engage overmuch as Madison and Jefferson pace about, calling Hamilton all sorts of things. Of course, they can do little to him, Hamilton is firmly in Washington’s pocket and none of the men dare cross Washington.

(Especially Burr, who has his own reasons for avoiding the man.)

“I have to resign,” Jefferson says one day, “I can’t put out this fire from inside the house. We have to get rid of him.”

Madison agrees, and so does Burr, after a beat.

After all, he and Hamilton are no longer friends. They are no longer anything at all.

 

***

 

They confront Hamilton across the same desk Burr once fucked him on and it feels eighteen different kinds of wrong. Madison and Jefferson delight in it, spieling out the evidence – almost a thousand dollars paid to one Mr. James Reynolds, all heavily suggestive of embezzlement and corruption.

Burr can almost see the headline, blazing: _Immigrant Found Embezzling Government Funds_.

“You don’t even know what you’re asking me to confess,” Hamilton snaps at them, and his eyes find Burr, blaze on him like coals. Burr’s hand twitches at his side, thinks he can feel Hamilton’s old ink-stain burning on his skin like a warning.

_What are you trying to hide, Burr?_

“You have nothing. I don’t have to tell you anything at all. Unless…” Hamilton trails off, and his eyes finally fall from Burr and to his desk instead, pensive.

“If I can prove that I never broke the law, do you promise not to tell another soul?”

Hamilton does not look cornered, does not look frightened, for all they’ve laid before him. Burr wonders what’s up his sleeve.

Hamilton pulls out a drawer, opens the false bottom of it. He withdraws a tightly folded letter, unfolds it and hands it to Burr. His gaze is back on Burr, accusing, but Burr refuses to meet his eyes even as his knees feel weak under the weight of the gaze.

He reads the letter out loud until his throat goes dry as the realization hits – it had not been embezzlement, but extortion for an affair. He drops the letter, tries to disguise his shock as disgust.

(And somewhere in the pit of his stomach is a certain jealousy as well, though he’s long lost all rights to jealousy.)

Hamilton’s case is made, and Jefferson and Madison slink out of the office, satisfied enough that they have a scandal in their pockets. Burr lingers for a moment, chest still tight. He stares down at Hamilton’s desk. He remembers too well what the wood feels like on his skin, remembers the bruises that blossomed halfway up his thighs after one especially eventful night when Hamilton had begged harder, _harder_.

There’s a stain on the wood, a blotch of ink. Burr’s hand goes to his ribcage, where there’s a similar stain. He wonders if it’s from the same occurrence, wonders if Hamilton would know. Ink had been everywhere, that night, bleeding over their skin, over the wood.

 _Why did you keep the desk?_ he wants to ask. Burr had long ago sold his, unable to write upon it without remembering Hamilton prostrate across it, pliant and eager.

“Burr,” says Hamilton, and the fury of his gaze is gone, replaced by a sort of abashment – although Hamilton’s secret hadn’t been made public, they had still forced his hand, and Burr feels all the dirtier for it, “how do I know you won’t use this against me?”

Burr wants to laugh, thinking of everything in his arsenal he could use against Hamilton. This is merely a drop in the bucket.

“Alexander,” he says, and thinks Hamilton flinches a bit at the use of his first name, “rumors only grow.”

He touches the stain on the desktop, unable to help himself. His finger traces the shape, a starburst, a circle exploded.

“Besides,” he takes his hand away, uses what conviction he has left to look Hamilton in the eye, “we both know what we know.”

 

***

 

Hamilton has never done anything halfheartedly, so when word of the Reynolds Pamphlet reaches Burr, he is only mildly surprised. In truth, calling it a pamphlet was folly, Hamilton had practically written a novel on his sins.

Burr reads the entire thing even as loathing crawls across his skin and his tongue goes dry in his mouth. Hamilton refutes the corruption charges against himself well enough, but in doing so shines light on every lurid detail of the affair.

He can’t help but wonder what Hamilton might have written if the details of their own affair had been brought to light. A masochistic part of him is even curious, wondering how the affair might be described from Hamilton’s point of view.

_I had frequent meetings with her, most of them in my own house, Mrs. Hamilton with our children being absent on a visit to her father..._

Burr even feels a pang of sympathy for Eliza, though he too has been complicit in Hamilton’s betrayals – at least they had kept to the offices.

(And once, in Burr’s bed, but his dear Theodosia had said nothing upon returning to find their bedding stripped and changed awkwardly, had quietly fixed the corners while shaking her head at him, muttering _what would you do without me?_ )

It occurs to him that he should write Eliza, express his sympathies, but then he imagines Hamilton stumbling across the letter, and the thought is put away for good.

 

***

 

The universe is a strange and cruel thing. When the young woman comes into Burr’s office inquiring about obtaining a divorce he thinks little of it until she says her name.

“Maria Reynolds,” she says, and even though she blushes a little – far too many know her name now, and for all the wrong reasons – her voice is still rich as honey and Burr can see how Hamilton might have gotten stuck in it.

He makes quick work of her divorce, has her single again in no time. He has a hundred questions for her but does not pry, and besides, he is a little too afraid of the answers.

She kisses him one night, and for a moment he holds her, but the knowledge that she once did this to Hamilton gnaws at him, turns his stomach. So he pushes her away, gently, and goes home alone.

 

***

 

He hears of Philip Hamilton’s death and sends Hamilton a condolence letter that goes unanswered. Though they are all but enemies now, he still feels a horrid sorrow at the idea of losing a child. Theodosia is his whole life, a brilliant woman with an education whom he fully expects to change the world.

She is the best thing Burr has ever made, and he knows Hamilton echoed the sentiment with Phillip.

Burr can’t imagine the notion, the grief that must come with it.

He sees Hamilton one Sunday, standing with his children on the church’s steps. Neither man had been particularly religious when they’d spent their nights together, and Burr remains fairly indifferent, though he speaks otherwise when asked.

(He hasn’t shown his face in a church since he was young. Certainly not since he’s known Hamilton.)

His hair has greyed from its once lustrous black, and though Hamilton is not a very old man, Burr notices he’s stooped a bit, as if his grief is a living weight that has fastened itself upon his back.

Their eyes meet across the street and Burr raises his hand in a wave, polite. There is a moment of blankness on Hamilton’s face, and then he turns away, wraps his arm around a black-haired daughter as they go inside.

Burr watches them go, watches the wooden doors swing shut behind them, the sign of a cross embossed there. A queer part of him wants to follow them, to offer his condolences again, but he knows he no longer has the right to comfort Hamilton, that his chapter in Hamilton’s life has ended, the time run out.

 

***

 

In that regard, Burr is dreadfully wrong.

The election edges closer, and Burr can _taste_ the presidency. He’s so close to that proverbial Room he’d pictured all those years ago.

He’s lost so much – lost Hamilton, lost Theodosia – that surely the universe will give him this one thing, this one wish. He’s paid his dues.

Every dog has its day.

So he campaigns. He smiles more. He shakes every hand offered, charms the women and claps the men on the back. He tries to keep his name on everyone’s lips, acts the everyman. He drinks beer with them, shares war stories (though not all his war stories, as he recalls select nights, a cruel slap of memory).

Burr has lain in wait for this, and finally, _finally_ , it seems within his reach.

 

***

 

He’d known the Hamiltons had moved uptown, but didn’t know the address. So when the door flings open and Hamilton stands upon the threshold, Burr takes a step back before he even realizes it, shocked.

“Well, if it isn’t Aaron Burr, sir!” says Hamilton, and he seems almost glad to see him. Burr’s stomach twists.

Hope is a pathetic and determined thing.

“Alexander,” he says before he can stop himself.

Hamilton eyes the leaflets clutched in Burr’s hand, raises an eyebrow.

“You’ve created quite a stir,” he says.

“I’m going door to door,” Burr replies. As if it wasn’t obvious.

“You’re openly campaigning?” Hamilton’s brow furrows. Burr knows some consider his strategy distasteful – candidates are supposed to be above the fray, letting the surrogates sing their praises. Burr is a man apart, with a campaign headquarters, a league of supporters going door to door, his own relentless pace.

Because goddamnit, he’s waited long enough. He’s _taking_ this.

“That’s new,” Hamilton says.

“Honestly,” Burr says, and he knows he’s confessing too much but he can’t help it, the familiarity of Hamilton before him is overwhelming his senses, “it’s kind of draining.”

It’s more than draining, it’s _exhausting_. Burr’s smile feels more and more forced. He works nonstop on the campaign, only manages a few hours of sleep a night.

It’ll all be worth it though, to _win_. To be in The Room.

“Burr,” says Hamilton, and his voice is soft, “is there anything you wouldn’t do?”

Burr’s teeth clench together as the familiarity of being near Hamilton twists, sours into their breakup – Hamilton’s hand pulling away from his, body turned, saying _you'll ruin me._

 “No,” replies Burr, and maybe his voice is too sharp, but the sheer fucking hypocrisy of it is infuriating – Hamilton, who had done god-knows to win over Jefferson and Madison, now standing here, judging him.

“And you know what?” he adds, because he cannot stop himself – he is the hurricane, now.

“What?”

“I learned that from you.”

And he had. He is more like Hamilton now than perhaps he has ever been – finally chasing what he wants, doing whatever it takes to get it.

“Burr--” begins Hamilton, but Burr cuts him off. He’s too tired for this. Too close to what he wants.

“Hate the sin, love the sinner, right?” he knows he’s goading now, but he’s helpless to stop it. He presses a leaflet into Hamilton’s palm, deliberately, curls Hamilton’s fingers around it. He still remembers those hands and the way he might have loved them.

 

 

***

 

Burr loses.

The race goes to the delegates, and Jefferson wins in a landslide. And Hamilton _endorses_ the idiot. Endorses him! After every horrible thing he’s said about him, after Jefferson had led the campaign to ruin Hamilton, Hamilton still picks him.

Over Burr.

 He can’t say it’s the reason he loses, but the insult remains like a rash. Had he lost to a Federalist, perhaps it would have been understandable, but this? To a man Hamilton openly despises?

Which begs the question – how much must he hate Burr, to vote against him?

Burr held no hope of rekindling anything with Hamilton, or even staying friends. But he’s treated Hamilton with nothing but civility - save, perhaps, for a confrontation across a familiar desk, suggestions of embezzlement. But Jefferson had led that charge!

He holds his head high and does not let them see how destroyed he really is. He congratulates Jefferson and it almost sounds genuine. He’ll be Vice President, at least. Wait a little longer, and he can run for president again, with a stronger background.

Every dog has its day.

“Hey, Burr,” says Jefferson, as Burr begins to leave, “when you see Hamilton, thank him for the endorsement.”

Jefferson’s smile is the vilest thing Burr has ever seen.

 

***

_Jefferson sits across the desk from Hamilton._

_“I want your endorsement,” he says._

_Hamilton laughs, an outburst at the absurdity of the question._

_“And why…” he begins, “would I give it to you? The people think you’re an elitist Francophile. I just think you’re a pompous fool, myself.”_

_“You’re voting for Burr, then?”_

_“I haven’t decided.”_

_“Burr’s campaigning pretty hard, don’t you think?”_

_“I suppose.”_

_“He’s campaigning against me, even. Smearing my good name.”_

_Hamilton doesn’t respond, but thinks to himself that Jefferson’s name sounded a lot better when he was still in France._

_“I’ve heard a few things about him, myself…” Jefferson trails off, but Hamilton’s face remains expressionless, so he soldiers on, “a few stories from Washington.”_

_“Is that so?” responds Hamilton, but his fingers tighten at the edges of the chair._

_“Seems the man has certain…proclivities,” Jefferson drawls out the word, “now, I’ve got a few of my own, and while I personally couldn’t care less, some of the public is the religious sort, and well…rumors only grow.”_

_He leans forward and smiles widely at Hamilton. He’s enjoying himself._

_“Could ruin a man’s life, let alone his career, if such things were to come to light,” Jefferson laces his hands together, rests his chin on them. The smile is still there, vile._

_“Hamilton, I’m a respectful sort,” Jefferson says, “and I’d hate to ruin a man unless I had to.”_

_They both know it’s a lie.  
“Now, if I had the endorsement of someone a key person or two…say, the wayward darling of the Federalist Party, I wouldn’t have to use what I know.”_

_“You’d keep quiet,” says Hamilton. Not a question, but a demand._

_“I would,” replies Jefferson, “do we have a deal?”_

_Hamilton rises and offers his hand to shake, cannot hide the flinch when Jefferson takes it._

_“Don’t worry,” drawls Jefferson, “the people won’t know what we know.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thank you all for reading and commenting. You have no idea how much it means to me. I never thought this would be the largest thing I've written but it's turned into that and I love it. 
> 
> There's one, maybe two more chapters left, but we're getting there. I still have to iron a few things out.
> 
> Also, special thanks to Calli for answering emails titled "feedback on sin" and encouraging me.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Look him in the eye, aim no higher._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry in advance.

Burr may be the Vice President, but he’s still as far from the Room as he’s ever been. Jefferson effectively shuts him out of all important goings-on, makes it clear that Burr is an intruder in his presidency. Burr still tries, perseveres as much as he can amidst the limitations placed on him. The same level-headed rationality that served him so well as a lawyer is echoed as President of the Senate. He earns praise for his actions, even from enemies. He’s _good_ at his job, and he tries to make them realize that.

Still, it is soon clear that Jefferson plans to drop Burr from the ticket come the next election, so Burr’s intentions turn instead to running for Governor of New York. _The presidency will come_ , he tells himself, though he is no longer so sure, _just wait_.

Every dog has its day.

Yet when he runs for Governor, Burr’s name is openly smeared in the press, rivals coming out of the woodwork to disparage him.

Burr loses the race, just as he lost the presidency.

“Sorry to hear about your loss,” Jefferson says the next time they meet, clapping a hand on Burr’s shoulder. His tone, however, says he is nowhere near sorry – in fact, there’s a vein of glee to it, a smug delight. Burr twists away from the touch, is unable to muster so much as a false smile.

He’s lost everything, and the weight of it is harder to bear every day.

 

***

 

And then in April, the _Albany Register_ prints a letter from Dr. Charles Cooper, detailing Hamilton’s opinion of Burr with all the delight of a gossip:

_A dangerous man,_ screams the ink across the paper, and Burr’s hands shake with fury, _and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government_.

Furthermore, in the letter Dr. Cooper alludes to still worse things, claiming that Hamilton holds a still more despicable opinion of Burr. And while Burr should brush this off, ignore it, it feels like salt rubbed into a wound, and the pain makes him reckless.

He won’t lose again.

He sends a cutout of the letter to Hamilton, demanding an explanation, hoping somewhere deep in his heart that Hamilton will disavowal the statements, that it was nothing but gossip.

Instead, what he receives from Hamilton is an infuriating letter that claims Burr’s grievances are far too vague, that he should be more specific if he wants Hamilton’s confirmation or denial _. I am only trying to do the best for our republic_ , writes Hamilton, and Burr feels rage like a living thing in his throat. The man won’t even own up to his slander, instead prefers to antagonize Burr. Hamilton seems to possess an inherent knowledge of what buttons to press, as if he has a blueprint of Burr in his mind with every detail on his mechanisms writ large.

Being in the eye of the hurricane that is Alexander Hamilton is a beautiful thing when used in affection; a horrid one when used to provoke.

Incensed by the glib response, Burr writes his reply while his chest still feels hot. Fury glides through his pen and he thinks for a moment he thinks he should burn the letter rather than send it, but instead he writes one more sentence.

_Answer for the accusations I lay at your feet, or prepare to bleed, good man._

The next day, part of him regrets the rash nature of the letter (sent before his emotions could cool), but though his fury no longer rages, it still exists, a glowing coal. _Just answer,_ he thinks. He tells himself that’s all he wants. Confirmation or denial. Something concrete. No palaces of paragraphs, just a yes or a no. Is it so much to ask?

Yet Hamilton doesn’t hear Burr’s silent plea, and his subsequent response is no less infuriating than the first.

_You stand only for yourself. It’s what you do._

Hamilton has always written his way out, written his own deliverance. Now, though, he writes himself to the dueling ground. Burr’s final letter is concise.

_Than stand, Alexander. Weehawken. Dawn._

He pauses, then adds the last line, his heartbeat quickening. He shouldn’t.

_Guns drawn._

He won’t lose again. _  
_ Hamilton’s response offers no apology, no reconciliation, only one sentence, messy, quite unlike his usual script.

_You’re on._

There’s a blotch of ink under the sentence, as if Hamilton had intended to write something else but had thought better of it.

 

***

 

The night before the duel, he writes Theodosia a letter. He tells her he loves her, though that expression alone feels inadequate in conveying the depth of his love for her. She is the only one who survived past childhood, and the young woman she is now – brilliant, strong, beautiful – makes him believe that he can do something good in the world.

He wants to write more, to give some explanation of how it’s come to this, but he himself doesn’t think he knows, only that somehow he is here, writing a goodbye he prays Theodosia will never read, telling her he loves her, that he will do anything for her.

He writes another letter, this one to the late Theodosia. He tells her he misses her. She was never an overly sentimental woman, so even in a letter that will never be delivered he is succinct.

He can’t help but think he wouldn’t be here if she was still alive, that she would have found a way to compromise, cooled his recklessness with her quiet, knowing smile and confidant hands. When things first soured and the late nights with Hamilton had ceased, she’d asked him if he intended to work any more with Hamilton. He’d taken her hands in his and said _no, our work is done_. She’d smiled, softly, kissed his hands and said, _I’m sorry_ , held him against her breast like a child. He still remembers the warmth of her beneath his cheek and he seals the letter quickly – the one that will never be read – lest he begin weeping.

_Why did you have to leave?_ , he thinks, and is unsure if the thought is meant for Theodosia or Hamilton.

Maybe both.

Burr snuffs the candle out and retires to the bedroom, the same room he’d shared years with Theodosia on.

The same room he’d once fucked Hamilton in, trying in his own desperate way to make him stay, to keep the lines from diverging.

He lies there for hours on end in the quiet darkness, and doesn’t even bother closing his eyes. He knows there’s no use in trying to sleep. Instead he imagines scenarios, hundreds of them. In some, they throw their shots to the sky. In one especially fanciful one, Hamilton apologizes for the insults and the matter is resolved with no guns drawn.

In some, Hamilton shoots him, the once-intelligent eyes as flat and dead as a shark’s, filled with hatred for Burr.

In some, he shoots Hamilton, and the lines diverge no more.

In some, they both shoot each other, and in some macabre way that feels the most fitting of all – both men ruined, by and for each other.

 

***

 

Before dawn, the Hudson looks like ink. There is only the faintest glow on the horizon, and the water beneath their boat is astonishingly dark and smooth. The air around them is still, the birds not yet awake. None of the men speak. Burr’s hand goes to his ribs unconsciously, tracing the ink-spot there. The pistol feels leaden on his hip.

_I just wanted an answer_ , he thinks again. But then, that had been a common mantra throughout their years: different meanings, but fundamentally the same. For all Hamilton’s talking, Burr has so rarely been sure of what he was actually _saying_.

He remembers thinking _just once, stop speaking in paragraphs. Tell me what you mean,_ as he and Hamilton had stood on the precipice of something that ultimately went unfinished, unsaid. It may have meant something else then (when he thought there was something salvageable between them, when they were less a shipwreck and more a vessel floundering), but he finds the message still fits.

_This is wrong_ , Burr thinks, _all of this is wrong_.

It was never supposed to come to this, and the memories come unbidden as Burr stares out across the inky waters with a knot in his stomach and an old, faded ink-stain burning on his skin.

***

 

_(Not long after Laurens’s death, Hamilton bursts into Burr’s office with no fanfare, does not give Burr time to offer so much as a greeting before Hamilton’s mouth is on his, desperate. When Burr tries to ask, Hamilton only moans something guttural against Burr’s neck that is part pain and part arousal. His hands tear at Burr’s clothes like they’re burning him alive. He kisses Burr so hard he splits his lip, grabs Burr and strokes him roughly, dry-palmed, until Burr shoves him away and takes matters into his own hands._

_The sex is fraught, needy, Hamilton driving himself back into Burr so hard Burr is unsure who’s fucking who, Hamilton’s hands grabbing for purchase against Burr’s desk. Hamilton moans, the same guttural, pained noise, but when Burr’s tempo slows Hamilton reaches back, sinks his fingers into Burr’s skin and draws him back in._

_‘Please,’ Hamilton says, the first word he’s spoken since coming into the office, and in that one word is so much, so Burr does his best to oblige, drives into Hamilton for as long and as hard as he can, grabs a fistful of Hamilton’s hair and tilts his head back so he can meet his eyes, find something there, but Hamilton’s are closed, unreadable._

_Afterward, Hamilton had been still. Burr remembers this most of all, because Hamilton was so rarely still – even in sleep he was fitful, thrashing limbs and murmuring nonsensical things. His hands, especially, were always moving, twitching for a quill, making do with whatever else they could find; most often his clothing, adjusting and fidgeting with the ridiculously overwrought coats he insists on wearing._

_But in this moment, Hamilton is still, lying beside Burr on his office rug. Silent, too – another thing he recalls vividly, for Hamilton’s mouth had worked as often as his fingers did, turning simple sentences into long stories that never seemed to end._

_One hand moves, lays splay-fingered across Burr’s chest._

_“I’ve imagined death so much,” Hamilton says, the first coherent thing he’s said since bursting into the office, “that it feels more like a memory, like I’m recalling something I’ve experienced before.”_

_A pause. Burr doesn’t know what to say – this is a new kind of morbid intensity from Hamilton, a kind of hideous intimacy he has no idea how to handle. They haven’t spoken of death since the night on the embankment, when they were young soldiers and the nation was yet unborn. Even that had been something uncertain and undefined, it had been Hamilton trembling in the moonlight, saying show me, show me I’m still alive. Though he supposes this situation now is much the same._

_Show me, show me I’m still alive._

_His own hand rises up, covers Hamilton's. His fingers find the spaces in between Hamilton’s, interlace, connecting them._

_“I wasn’t supposed to live past twenty, not with…” Hamilton trails off, but Burr knows the story – the sickness, the hurricane, the war. He knows Hamilton exists on borrowed time, and Hamilton has never denied it, but this is the first and only time they speak so frankly of it._

_He thinks, but will never say, that Hamilton reminds him of a man who has already seen his epitaph carved and knows the words by heart.)_

***

 

Hamilton arrives with Nathaniel Pendleton and the doctor. Hamilton is oddly quiet, staring out at the grounds, unreadable. Burr watches them, and doesn't know if it's hatred that he feels or if this is how love is, when it's curdled and gone rancid - a lead weight in the stomach, a pressure on his ribs. The air feels hot, suddenly, like he’s just realized the July heat (even the early morning there is little reprieve), and Burr feels sweat beading at his brow.

It feels absurd; to greet Hamilton, shake his hand, as if they’d just happened to meet here by chance. He recalls, long ago, how they had once proclaimed duels to be dumb and immature, the most uncouth of challenges.

“Sir,” says Hamilton, head nodding curtly and something long-dead stirs in Burr’s belly. He thinks for a moment he can stop this; that somehow they can undo the years, salvage it. That there’s something he can say to make this right. _Just answer_ , he has so long thought, but what about Hamilton? What words is he waiting for, from Burr?

But he doesn’t have the words to give him. He didn’t have them that night on the embankment, didn’t have them at Hamilton’s wedding, didn’t have them when Hamilton confessed his intimacy with death. He’s never had them.

Hamilton has all the words, always had.

***

 

Burr wants desperately to delope, throw his shot to the sky. Aim to injure, at most. Burr has never been a dueling man, he doesn’t think of death as an old friend. He hasn’t yet seen his epitaph carved.

Yet when the doctor doesn’t just turn around, instead making his way down a hill until he is out of sight, fear crawls through his veins. Why has the man gone so far? The doctors don’t usually go so far, not out of sight like this. Surely not unless something more heinous is planned. And hadn’t he seen Hamilton conferring with the doctor just before he left? Dread feels like a cannonball in his belly, edged in fear. His hand goes to his stomach, then his ribcage, right at the ink-stain. He wonders what a bullet wound would feel like, there. Burr’s been shot at enough times, but the bullets never found home. Thinking of it makes his skin go hot; he’s seen enough men die on the battlefield, watched bullets tear through skin and bone.

He thinks of his daughter, his Theodosia, and his skin feels hotter still.

Burr looks to Hamilton; looks for some reaction at the doctor’s disappearance, but Hamilton’s eyes on are the pistol. He is examining it the same way Burr’s seen him examine his writing, with a single-minded determination and intensity. His slender fingers fiddle with the trigger, methodical, but Burr is too far away to see exactly what is being done.

Time seems to slow to a molasses pace.

Burr recalls seeing Hamilton shoot in the army. The man could practically knock the wing off a fly at twenty paces, had a reputation for his marksmanship among the company. Burr had had no such reputation – he was a passable shot and nothing else, he tended to wait a moment too long to shoot, and the slight hesitation would be enough to shift his aim.

The sun, now rising, glints off Hamilton’s face and Burr realizes the man’s wearing his glasses, honed his vision.

_Why, if not to take deadly aim?_

Surely Hamilton wouldn’t need the glasses if he intended to delope. But the heart is a much narrower target than the sky.

Burr’s heart beats so fast he thinks it might burst out of his chest.

He thinks of the doctor, gone below the swell of the hill. Hamilton’s fingers at the trigger of the pistol, readied. The glasses in the sun, vision sharp.

Theodosia’s face, so like her mother’s, save for the eyes.

(Those were his. They had always been his.)

***

 

_If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?_

The words were once said to Burr with a genuine confusion, but the years have soured them, curdled them into something cruel and bitter. They change from a question asked to something graver, a taunt.

A challenge.

So he stands. For once in his goddamned life he stands, before a man he had once fallen for.

 

***

_Ten._

His finger is on the trigger, heart racing. He turns to face Hamilton.

Everything feels like it’s on fire, his blood screaming with adrenaline. The trigger seems to press back into his finger like it’s alive, eager.

_Look him in the eye, aim no higher_ , he thinks, but he’s terrified as to what he might see there (like a shark’s eyes, dead and flat).

He meets Hamilton’s eyes and there is _something_ \--

But before he can discern the look in his eyes Hamilton’s hand moves and a gunshot rings out, and Burr thinks _this is it, I’m a dead man_.

Before he can collapse (because surely he will, his body will realize what has happened, the pain will bloom any moment now), his finger tightens on the trigger, the last iota of pressure needed.

He’s still looking Hamilton in the eye.

The pistol recoils in his hand and he sucks in his breath. Everything feels so slow. His heart beats, once. There is no pain. Instead, a branch above his head is falling.

The realization rips through him as much as a bullet might have.

_Hamilton aimed his pistol at the sky._

 “ ** _WAIT!_** ” the word isn’t so much screamed as it is wrenched from his mouth. As if he could summon the bullet back.

For a moment Hamilton stands, bewildered, and Burr thinks, _I missed. Thank god, I missed_.

And then Hamilton drops the pistol. It seems to take forever to fall. His hands fly to his stomach, where blood has already begun to seep out, the red blooming like roses on his shirt.

_If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?_

Ah, but he is not the one who fell.

Burr takes a step towards him. _One_. Another step. _Two_. He’s not sure why he’s counting the steps. More steps, all the way to seven before there’s a hand on his shoulder, someone ushering him away.

“ _Wait_ ,” he says again, but this time the word is soft, choked, barely above a whisper.

 

***

 

The last time he sees Hamilton, he’s being rowed back across the Hudson. Gulls fly overhead, crying out, and Burr thinks of vultures circling. He says nothing to the rest of the men, only sits mutely on the boat. He turns the pistol over in his hands, stares at it like it had a mind of its own, was something he could blame.

But ultimately, the blame was his.

He’d reacted. Hamilton had fired into the sky but Burr didn’t _know_ , he’d only heard the report of the gun. The finger tightening on the trigger had practically been a reflex.

If only he had _waited_.

He wants to tell himself that maybe it will be okay, that Hamilton will survive. He’s survived so much else. Disease, hurricanes, the war. What’s one bullet?

(In his heart of hearts, though, he knows. Time ran out.)

_I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory_ , Hamilton had said once, hand on Burr’s chest. Neither had known, then, that Burr would be the end of him.

 

***

 

He gets a drink when they make it back to the city. And another. The alcohol doesn’t burn going down; Burr’s entire body feels numbed, like he’d been living in ice water. He keeps drinking until his vision begins to blur, and even then he feels too lucid because he still has Hamilton’s name in his mouth.

He ends up in Trinity Church beside Theodosia’s grave. He’s dimly aware that Hamilton’s son must be buried somewhere nearby, that Hamilton will likely join him. He feels sick.

_You would have stopped me,_ he thinks.

“I didn’t wait,” he tells Theodosia’s tombstone, “I thought…”

_I thought he hated me enough to shoot me._

He stays at her grave for a long time, as if waiting for a reply.

 

***

 

He ends up outside of William Bayard’s house, where William Ness finds him. People seem to stream in and out. No one’s noticed Burr, yet. He can hear someone crying, somewhere, wailing in the streets.

“He’s inside,” Burr mumbles when he feels Ness’s hand on his arm.

“I know,” Ness replies, and the pressure increases. Burr doesn’t take his eyes off the house. As if he expects Hamilton to walk out at any moment, a wicked smile on his face.

“Look, Burr…” Ness says, “you can’t stay here. Someone’s going to recognize you. You’d better hide.”

He knows that. Abstractly, he knows that. He’s the villain, now.

Ness begins to lead him again. Burr looks back at the house, just once.

Thinks, _wait, Alexander. Please, wait_.

 

***

 

“You’ll ruin me,” Hamilton had said once, soft, as he pulled his hand away.

“You’ll ruin yourself,” Burr had replied.

(In the end, they were both right.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god this has turned into such an adventure.  
> \- Thank you EVERYONE who's read/liked/commented on this. You guys have no idea. This is my first foray in multi-chapter fic and the support has meant the world <33  
> \- It might not be completely over. I have another chapter I want to write, someday, that's a little less sad - but the how of it needs a lot of work, and in the meantime I want to write different/happier Hamilton fic.  
> \- On that note, I'm really sorry this ended as tragically as it did . I couldn't help it :/  
> \- annnnd if anyone is interested, you can hit me up at thinksideways.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> This work (and the title) was originally inspired by a quote from a book called "Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character" by Roger G. Kennedy. It reads, "...the field of force which drew Burr to Hamilton and Hamilton to Burr, in wrath, mutual fascination, and a kind of hideous intimacy. They knew each other very, very well...Hamilton saw in Burr everything he feared most in himself."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [【翻译】a kind of hideous intimacy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9716834) by [Ham4Lin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ham4Lin/pseuds/Ham4Lin)




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